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7 

7^-^ Colonel JOHN QUINCY 



OF 



MOUNT WOLLASTON 



1689-1767 



A Public Character 

of 

New England's Provincial Period 



GEO. H. ELLIS CO. 
BOSTON 

1909 




^ 



JOHN QUINCY 

[Only extant Portrait] 



JOHN QUINCY 



MASTER OF MOUNT WOLLASTON; PROVINCIAL STATESMAN; COLONEL 
OF THE SUFFOLK REGIMENT; SPEAKER OF THE MASSACHU- 
SETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; MEMBER 
OF HIS MAJESTY'S COUNCIL 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered Sunday, February 2J, igo8 

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 

Q.UINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

BY 

DANIEL MUNRO WILSON 



PREPARED IN COLLABORATION WITH 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 



BOSTON 

Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 

i<^09 






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117 ry/ COMPLIMENTS OF 



Charles Francis Adams, 

84 State Street, Boston. 



PREFACE. 

The address printed in the following pages was deliv- 
ered at a celebration held in honor of John Quincy 
in the house of worship of First Church, Quincy, Mass., 
Februar}' 23, 1908. Owing to its length, a part of it only 
was then made use of. While this service, the first formal 
recognition of the eminently useful career, both public 
and private, of John Quincy, was held in view, it was 
contemplated to perpetuate his memory still further by 
some suitable publication. Thus the address naturally 
developed into what closely resembles a memoir, in the 
preparation of which I have had the pleasure of being 
practically a collaborator with Charles F. Adams, second 
of the name. Indeed, such rescue from oblivion of one 
who, in his day, "was as much esteemed as any man in 
the province," is another of the things done by Mr. Adams 
to honor his fathers and perpetuate in memory what is 
both veracious and noble in the traditions of Old Brain- 
tree and Quincy. A large, if not the larger, part of what 
is here set down is distinctly from his pen. In Larned's 
*' Literature of American History" it is stated that "no 
more trustworthy delineation of a New England town 
has ever been written than that to be found in the ' Three 
Episodes of Massachusetts History.'" The story of a 

s 



PREFACE. 



typical Massachusetts community, with the Puritan Com- 
monwealth for a background, it furnished a succinct 
account of Colonel Quincy, and a wise estimate of his 
character and influence. All this I took bodily from Mr. 
Adams's narrative; and, when additional facts had been 
elsewhere exhumed, the whole was submitted to Mr. 
Adams. Not only did he then subject the material to 
a thorough revision, but he gave to it an historical setting 
by means of which the chief figure is brought into scenic 
relations with the men and movements of his period. 
This has, in my judgment, greatly enhanced the value 
of the production, making of it, I venture to hope, a not 
unworthy interpretation of the terse inscriptions on mural 
tablet and cemetery monument. 

Daniel Munro Wilson. 

July, 1908. 



QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

President. 
Brooks Adams. 

Vice-President. 
Fred B. Rice. 

Secretary. 
Emery L. Crane. 

Treasurer. 
James L. Edwards. 

Librarian. 
H. Houghton Schumacher. 

Curators. 
Brooks Adams. Rev. E. N. Hardy, Ph.D. 

Emery L. Crane. George W. Morton. 

James L. Edwards. AYilliam G. Pattee. 

Fred B. Rice. 




Ushers chosen for the John Quincy Memorial Celebration : Thomas 
Fenno, Charles A. Price, Charles II. Johnson, James L. 
Edwards, H. Houghton Schumacher, Emery L. Crane. 

5 



QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



MEETING TO COMMEMORATE THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF 

COLONEL JOHN QONCY 

Who died in 1767, and whose Name was given to this Town when it was set ojf from 
Braintree, February 22, 1792. 

I. Organ Voluntary. 

n. Reading of Scriptures, Rev. Ellery Channing Butler. 

in. Prayer, Rev. Edwin Noah Hardy. 

rV. Hymn, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

We love the venerable house From humble tenements around 
Our fathers built to God; Came up the pensive train. 

In heaven are kept their grateful vows. And in the church a blessing found, 
Their dust endears the sod. Which filled their homes again. 

Here holy thoughts a light have shed 

From many a radiant face. 
And prayers of tender hope have spread 

A perfume through the place. 



They live with God, their homes are dust; 

But here their children pray. 
And, in this fleeting lifetime, trust 

To find the narrow way. 



V. Introductory Remarks, Brooks Adams, Esq. 
VI. Historical Address, Rev. Daniel Munro Wilson. 
YU. Hymn, by William Parsons Lunt. 
When driven by oppression's rod, The altar and the school still stand. 



Our fathers fled beyond the sea, 
Their care was first to honor God, 
And next to leave their children free. 

Above the forest's gloomy shade 
The altar and the school appeared: 
On that, the gifts of faitli were laid; 
In this, their precious hojjes were reared. 



The sacred pillars of our trust; 

And freedom's sons shall fill the land 

When we are sleeping in the dust. 

Before thine altar, Lord, we bend, 
With grateful song and fervent prayer; 
For thou, who wast our fathers' friend, 
Wilt make our offspring still thy care. 



QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

VIII. Historical Address, Charles Francis Adams, Esq. 

IX. Hymn, Old Hundred. 

From all that dwell below the skies, Eternal are thy mercies, Lord; 

Let the Creator's praise arise; Eternal truth attends thy word; 

Let the Redeemer's name be sung Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore. 

Through every land, by every tongue. Till suns shall rise and set no more. 

X. Benediction, Rev. EUery Charming Butler. 

FIRST CONGREGATION.Uj CHURCH 

QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS 

3 P.M., 8UND.\Y, FEBRUARY 23, 1908. 




u 
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B 
a 

o 

I—. 

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THE COMMEMORATIVE EXERCISES. 

On the day following the anniversary of the birth of 
Washington, Sunday, February 23, the exercises in 
commemoration of Colonel John Quincy were celebrated 
in the commodious house of worship of the ancient First 
Church of Christ, with which society that personage 
was closely connected throughout his career. The 
edifice was well filled at the hour appointed, three o'clock 
in the afternoon, by residents of Quincy and by many 
from neighboring towns. The invited guests included 
the present mayor of the city, the Hon. William T. Shea, 
and all his predecessors in that ofl&ce, every one of them, 
from the first incumbent, Col. Charles H. Porter, happily 
still living. There were also invited the selectmen of the 
towns which, with Quincy, formed the original township 
of Braintree, the wide-spread community so long rep- 
resented by Colonel Quincy: Randolph, Holbrook, 
and the part still distinctively known as Braintree. 
The Historical Society of the adjoining town of Wey- 
mouth responded with a generous delegation of its mem- 
bers to the invitation sent them; as did the Massachu- 
setts Society of Colonial Dames, the Adams Chapter 
of the Daughters of the Revolution, and similar or- 
ganizations. The direct descendants of Colonel John 
Quincy, and their connections in the Adams and Quincy 
and other families, were well represented. His Honor* 
the Mayor, unable to attend, sent a letter of regrets, but 

9 



JOHN QUINCY 



the President of the Council, Ralph W. Hobbs, and other 
members of the city government were present. 

After the organ voluntary by the organist, Miss Alice 
B. Haskell, appropriate passages of Scripture were read 
by the pastor of First Church, the Rev. Ellery Channing 
Butler. Among these selections were the following: — 

"Let us call to remembrance the great and the good 
through whom the Lord hath wrought glory and honor; 
such as were leaders of the people, men renowned for 
power, for counsel, for understanding and foresight; 
wise and eloquent in their teachings, and by their knowl- 
edge made fit helpers of their fellow-men. 

"They were honored in their generations, and were the 
glory of their times. 

"And though some have left no memorial behind 
them, yet their righteousness is not lost, and the blessed 
results of their goodness cannot be blotted out. Their 
bodies are buried in peace; but their work lives on for- 
ever. 

"The people will tell of their wisdom, and after-times 
will show forth their praise. For the memorial of virtue 
is immortal, because it is known with God and with 
men. When it is present, men take example of it; and 
when it is gone, they earnestly desire it. It weareth a 
crown forever, having gotten the victory, striving for 
undefiled rewards." 



10 



JOHN QUINCY 



PRAYER BY THE REV. EDWIN N. HARDY, Ph.D. 

Almighty God, our heavenly Parent, we thy children 
love and revere thee, God of our fathers. Thou art the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in thee we 
live, move, and have our being. The heavens declare 
thy glory, and the firmament sheweth thy handiwork. 
All that is has come forth from thee, and all things are 
upheld and energized by thee. Thy beneficent purpose 
shapes and controls all things. Thou hast created man 
but a little lower than the angels, and thou madest him 
to have dominion over all the works of thy hands. We 
thank thee that thou hast given unto man the privilege 
of sharing with thee the advancement of the kingdom of 
righteousness, and w^e recognize with gratitude our in- 
debtedness not only to thee, but to those who have lived 
before us. In the present we enjoy the rich heritage of 
the past, and would not be unmindful of our obligations 
to those who, through sacrifice, heroism, and devotion, 
made possible our larger life. We thank thee for the 
stimulating and enriching influences which ever flow from 
great and noble lives. We thank thee for the great 
leaders of men, the makers and moulders of public 
opinion, the champions of righteousness who have lived 
and wrought here in other days. Help us to keep green 
in memory these noble men and women, that we may 
perpetuate their deeds and emulate their virtues. We 
praise thee for our homes, schools, churches, and free 

11 



JOHN QUINCY 



institutions, and would not forget those who founded 
them and made them possible. Enable us, we entreat 
thee, to link the best things of the past to the present 
that we may be strengthened to meet our responsibilities, 
obligations, and opportunities with such noble purpose, 
consecrated energy, and sane insight that righteousness 
may everywhere prevail and thy kingdom speedily come. 
Give to this generation a correct vision of the past, that 
we may intelligently discern the sign of the present times, 
and so live and act that those who follow us may have oc- 
casion for rejoicing. Grant us a true and large vision 
of the future, and enable us to make real our best ideals. 

Bless this ancient church and its pastor and all who 
here minister in thy name. Bless all our churches and 
free institutions, and especially this organization under 
whose auspices we to-day meet. Bless the city and make 
it worthy of the great and valuable heritage of the past, 
and may it ever hold in loving remembrance its noble 
benefactors, and, stimulated by the past, may it wisely 
build in the present for the welfare of the future. 

We ask all these favors in the name of the Christ, the 
revealer of thy love and wisdom and the interpreter of 
life. Amen. 

The hymn, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was 
announced by the pastor. The entire congregation 
joined in the singing, led by the choir of First Church, 
consisting of the following-named persons: Miss Marion 
Spinney, Mrs. Philip Hayes, Mr. William A. Sweet, and 
Mr. C. Pol Plancon. 

12 



JOHN QUINCY 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY 
BROOKS ADAMS. 

My Fclloiv-citizcns of Quincy, — You know that we meet 
to honor him for whom our town is named. Of John 
Quincy I shall say nothing. That task is committed to 
abler hands than mine. But it may not be unbecoming 
in me to draw your attention to one aspect of this cere- 
mony which, I apprehend, is of moment to us all. 

When just entering on old age, John Quincy's great- 
grandson, John Quincy Adams, thus communed with him- 
self, as he one day wrote in his diary: "Democracy has 
no forefathers, it looks to no posterity. It is swallowed 
up in the present, and thinks of nothing but itself. This 
is the vice of democracy, and it is incurable. Democracy 
has no monuments. It strikes no medals. It bears the 
head of no man upon a coin. Its very essence is icono- 
clastic." 

Since my grandfather thus philosophized, three-quarters 
of a century have elapsed, and, if we modern democrats 
have lost something of the elastic confidence of youth, 
we have at least learned something of due reverence for 
age. We strive to save our famous buildings, we some- 
times erect tablets to the dead, we begin to honor the 
past. 

From the banishment of our pastor, John Wheelwright, 
downward, this town has contributed its share to those 
labors which have made our Commonwealth renowned; 

13 



JOHN QUINCY 



but among all our ancestors perhaps not one has deserved 
better at the hands of his posterity than John Quincy, 
of whom we know but little more than that he has left 
to us his name. At length this reproach is to be lifted 
from us. One of his descendants has raised to his mem- 
ory the monument which we now dedicate, and to-day the 
story of his life shall be told. I have the honor to intro- 
duce to you the Rev. Daniel Munro Wilson. 



14 



JOHN QUINCY 



ADDRESS BY THE 
REV. DANIEL MUNRO WILSON. 

I need hardly say, Mr. President, and ladies and 
gentlemen, that it is with the deepest emotions I stand 
once more in this sacred place, and, stirred by the thoughts 
of the occasion, face so large a congregation of the resi- 
dents of Quincy, and others, the guests of our Historical 
Society. The spirit of the time, as well as of the locality, 
seems to uplift us, — ^his spirit whom we delight to honor 
as the father of our country. Revived by yesterday's 
observances, may that spirit possess us all the more 
to-day, as we dwell upon the character and achievements 
of the eminent leader of men w ho is peculiarly our own. 

Separated by exactly sixty years, the birthday of Wash- 
ington, 1732, and the birthday of the town of Quincy, 
1792, fall upon the same date in February; and for us 
who reside here, or who, residing elsewhere, have lived 
in this place and still retain loving recollections of it, the 
coincidence is auspicious, one pleasant to dwell upon. 
Indeed, so completely in harmony is it with the traditions 
of this community that it would seem to indicate delib- 
erate purpose on the part of our fellow-townsman. Gov- 
ernor Hancock, that he should thus, on the birthday of 
him who was then President of the young republic, have 
signed the act incorporating the town in which was the 
residence of its Vice-President. If so, it was only another 
among the fortunate happenings which seem, by a sort 

15 



JOHN QUINCY 



of moral gravitation, to be drawn to a locality in which 
there was an unusual concentration, not only of men and 
women of mark, but also of ideas around which a new 
world crystallized. 

It is, moreover, to be noted that Washington's name 
was a household word among your forebears here to a 
greater degree and in a more intimate sense than fell 
to the lot of all save a very few of our New England 
towns. Indeed, the friendly relations which existed 
between him and the eminent persons of this community 
seem to have been extended to the degree of being almost 
a common possession. The inhabitants as a whole felt, 
in a way, included in that circle of leading patriots. It 
was their neighbor, John Adams, who in the Continental 
Congress of 1775 spoke the decisive word which, coming 
from Massachusetts, summoned Colonel Washington to 
the command of the Continental Army. And these two, 
Washington and Adams, were joined in the first Chief 
Magistracy, when at last this republic was launched on 
its appointed course. Their fellow-townsman by birth, 
John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, 
also held close relations, not only official, but social, with 
the Father of his Country. For was it not Hancock and 
his wife Dorothy, born Quincy, who welcomed General 
Washington to their Philadelphia home, and afterwards 
President Washington to their Boston mansion.? More- 
over, there was that other eminent neighbor and sturdy 
patriot, Josiah Quincy, who, from his seat at North 
Braintree, "The Farms," as that portion of Quincy now 
known as Wollaston was called, maintained a constant 

16 



JOHN QUINCY 



correspondence with Washington throughout the siege of 
Boston, and delighted in a friendship which, beginning 
then, was never broken. Nor can I refrain from remind- 
ing you of the fact that it w^as President Washington who 
first called John Quincy Adams into what proved a 
public career of more than half a century, — a fact the 
memory of which is cherished by his fellow-townspeople, 
although Mr. Adams during fifty years of his long life 
was so continuously absent from the beloved place of his 
birth as to seem hardly of it. I know not whether 
Washington ever trod on Quincy soil. To the invitations 
pressed upon him to visit friends here, he returned cor- 
dial assurance of his desire so to do, and tradition even 
aflSrms that he carried the wish into act. Be that as it 
may, none the less are we justified in saying that Wash- 
ington also, in a certain, perhaps ideal, sense, is a tutelary 
of our city. 

What, however, I would especially emphasize in this 
auspicious natal coincidence in our civic anniversary is 
the fortunate linking of the birth of a heroic figure with 
the birth of a New England town. The three prevailing 
forces in the development of this nation are thus in a way 
conspicuously united, — the fit leader, the self-reliant 
people, the town government. Of these, each has played 
an essential part in the advancement of liberty and a 
gradual development of our civic principles. Their 
united and close interaction made America. Not a town 
of Massachusetts, however insignificant, but was in itself 
a republic. There, to quote from the "Three Episodes," 
was "bred the essence, moral and social, of a civilization 

17 



JOHN QUINCY 



instinct with stubborn independence and self-reliance." 
So, whenever here or elsewhere, the born leader arose, he 
found aligned with him a host of followers, kindred 
spirits, daringly responsive to his high appeals. So, too, 
when the people passionately aspired to the attainment of 
their civic ideals or the maintenance of their political 
rights, the able man, never lacking, stepped forth from 
among them, and then, in the old Teutonic fashion, 
lifted high on the shield of their confidence, he voiced 
their demands or led, foremost of all, their battle front. 
In the mother land and at a later day Carlyle labored 
vainly with forceful eloquence to evoke some leader from 
the ranks of a titled aristocracy to bring the "hordes of 
outcast, captainless," want-stricken wretches "under due 
captaincy," the one wise man "to take command of the 
innumerable foolish." Our deliverance was wrought in 
another way. The self-reliant, self-respecting men of 
the town meeting, — tillers of the soil and fishers of the 
sea, — whenever the issue was fairly joined and their 
rights invaded, saved themselves. So, "fearing God and 
knowing no other fear," they voted with "obscure" Sam 
Adams in Faneuil Hall, and stood with Captain John 
Parker, their farmer neighbor, on the green before the 
Lexington meeting-house. Beyond any other instance in 
history we can now recall, people and leaders were, in 
New England, all hewn from the same block. At the 
breaking out of the Revolutionary troubles, John Adams 
looked anxiously around among the patriots for those 
qualified to lead, — for the pre-eminent commanders of 
men. He found not one. "We have not men fit for 

18 



JOHN QUINCY 



the times," he lamented. *'We are deficient in genius, 
in education, in travel, in fortune, in everything." Simply 
unconscious of his own powers, it never occurred to him 
to distinguish himself from his neighbors; and, falling 
back upon the conviction that the colonies would have 
to put up with such as they had, he, for his part, threw 
himself with entire devotion into the cause of liberty. 
Strong in a strength which redoubled at emergent de- 
mands, "he lifted the Continental Congress in his arms, 
and hurled it over the irrevocable line of independence." 
Then, and later as he fronted the Court of St. James in 
defence of the new nation, the provincial Massachusetts 
lawyer stood level with kings in the dignity and force of 
his manhood. 

The leaders who in these United States, first and last, 
have thus, as occasion called, risen above their fellows, 
have not been few, nor is it too much to claim that they 
compare even more than favorably with the great of any 
other lands and ages. In this respect democracy, de- 
scribed by its detractors as a desert of mediocrities, has 
assuredly suffered no defeat. In statesmanship, it may 
be, we have yet to produce our Burke and Pitt with their 
philosophic depth of reflection and their splendor of 
oratory; but in every crisis which has arisen we have 
been favored with men fit for the occasion, — able men, 
men broadly intelligent and noble of purpose, rich in 
saving common sense, and, above all, endowed with 
wisdom born of high moral character. Them we love 
and venerate. They are part of a priceless heritage, a 
heritage which includes leaders in all lines of high human 

19 



JOHN QUINCY 



endeavor, — in literature, in law, in morals, in science, in 
art, in religion. That they created for us the plastic 
framework of a free constitution is much, for it stimulates 
the full expression of our individuality. But, above that 
even, America is incarnate in her great citizens, and, 
though long dead, they yet abide, a living power of lofty 
souls, thrilling us with ideal visions of freedom, with its 
deep moral obligation. Washington and Lincoln, Lowell, 
Emerson, and a thousand others, lift and inspire even 
when the sense of constitutional principles may fail. 
Ever a rebuke to all cheap and canting patriotism, they, 
in the words of Washington, "raise a standard to which 
the wise and honest can repair." The light from them 
falls upon us, and, as it descends, we also glow with a 
passion for truth, for justice, for God and our native 
land. 

" We find in our dull road their shining track; 

In every nobler mood 

We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 

Part of our life's unalterable good, 

Of all our saintlier aspiration." 

Here in New England, where the town meeting has been 
developed in its perfection, an unusually large proportion 
of distinguished Americans have been born. George 
William Curtis tells us that at the centennial anniversary 
of the surrender of Burgoyne, "Governor Horatio Sey- 
mour said to me that New England had done wisely in 
always carefully celebrating her great events and com- 
memorating her great men. I could not," he added, 
"help replying that New England was fortunate in pro- 

20 



JOHN QUINCY 



ducing great men, who naturally did great deeds worthy 
of commemoration." 

This, your city of Quincy, from the first settlement till 
now, has in that respect been signally favored, inasmuch 
as, from the beginning, not one generation has failed to 
furnish some eminent person, man or woman, who did 
notable deeds, or spoke timely words, measurably effec- 
tive in shaping the destinies of the American people. 

" From sire to son was stored the sacred seed. 
Age piled on age to meet a nation's need." 

The memorj'^ of the most distinguished of these Quincy 
has not been forgetful to celebrate; but so numerous are 
her sons and daughters of more or less renown that enough 
of them have been forgotten, even here at home, to make 
famous, if judiciously distributed, several other communi- 
ties. Colonel John Quincy, of Mt. Wollaston, is an in- 
stance. In his day he was one of the most trusted and 
influential public characters of the Province; but, for a 
hundred years or more, he has now been buried in ob- 
livion. The present generation in Quincy hardly know 
that such a man ever existed. For example, I once 
mentioned John Quincy to a lifelong resident, a man of 
affairs and influence in the town. The response was: 
"John Quincy .P — John Quincy.^ — I never heard of him 
before!" Another in the group then exclaimed: "Oh, 
yes, you have. We have all heard a great deal about 
John Quincy. You mean John Quincy Adams, don't 
you .^" That frank avowal of ignorance, and the respon- 
sive words which so darkened counsel, not unfairly ex- 

21 



JOHN QUINCY 



press what might be termed, in language none too strong, 
the reprehensible absence of all knowledge in this com- 
munity of a representative man, who through a long 
life loyally devoted himself to the welfare of his town and 
the Province, and whom in that now remote period it 
was the delight of his fellow-citizens to honor. A very 
few especially interested in the annals of the town, like 
Edwin W. Marsh — the loss of whom still weighs heavily 
on us — knew a date or so, and retained the tradition of 
one or two events in John Quincy's life; but even to them 
he was little more than a name. To the rest he is " name- 
less in dark oblivion." 

Nor, after all, is this oblivion, under the special cir- 
cumstances of the case and when fairly considered, 
altogether occasion for special wonder. Not only did 
John Quincy die as far back as 1767, an old man, even 
then long retired from active participation in affairs, but 
he died on the very verge of a cataclysm, both political 
and social. The Stamp Act was passed in 1765. The 
duty on tea had been imposed by Act of Parliament of 
June 14, 1767, less than one month before John Quincy 
passed away. The following year saw the British regi- 
ments landed in Boston. The events of the quarter of 
the eighteenth century which then ensued, before Quincy 
was set off from Braintree, do not need to be referred to. 
Those years were replete with incident. During them 
the old order of things came to an end. With it those 
who played a part therein passed off the stage, and a 
generation which knew them not entered upon it. That 
such periods of rapid change should wipe out the memory 

22 



JOHN QUINCY 



of both men and traditions is in the nature of tliin<:js. 
It was so in 1780. It was so again in 1870. The War 
of Secession, like the War of Independence, obliterated 
names and reputations and usages much as the flooding 
tide of an equinoctial gale obliterates footprints on the 
seashore. John Quincy's last recorded appearance at a 
Braintree town meeting was in September, 1758, probably 
a hundred and twenty years before the conversation to 
which I have referred took place; and the intervening cen- 
tury and a fifth witnessed two deluges. That under these 
circumstances the footprints of any but the most consid- 
erable of personages should have disappeared either from 
the sands of time or the memory of Quincy people, is 
not unnatural. 

But at last, some fifteen years ago, a gleam of light 
was projected back into the darkness. In the pages of 
the "Three Episodes" the mental and moral stature of 
John Quincy loomed vaguely up, the extent of his public 
services grew dimly visible. The ground for John 
Adams's statement that in his day Colonel John Quincy 
"was as much esteemed as any man in the Province'* 
began to become apparent. Yet little enough light was 
then or, for that matter, is even now available. The 
reason is made obvious by the statement " that not a 
letter or paper of his, or even a book known to belong to 
him, now remains in the possession of his descendants." 
In some house-cleaning cataclysm subsequent to his deatli 
all was swept away, — letters innumerable, multitudinous 
public documents, account books, journals not a few, a 
diary perhaps, — all vanished in an age incurious. For 

28 



JOHN QUINCY 



any possible biographer in a succeeding age next to noth- 
ing was left. And so it has come about that of John 
Quincy, second to none in the Province of Massachusetts 
Bay in his generation, "nothing now remains except a 
name and a few dates." His case resembles closely one 
lately made public concerning that English Earl of 
Leicester, the friend of America during the Revolutionary 
period. It was he who moved in Parliament that Ameri- 
can independence be recognized, and his name was a 
household word in both continents. But the materials 
for his biography became strangely lost; and thus he, too, 
passed from world-wide fame to complete oblivion. 
Patriotic services, though treasured in a few grateful 
minds, are remembered no more when those minds cease 
to work. Even tradition fades away. The printed 
record alone remains. That outlasts the very granite of 
your hills. 

Our all-but-forgotten worthy. Colonel John Quincy, 
of Mt. Wollaston, he who for three or more generations 
has lingered a mere shadow in the minds of the best- 
informed in this community, and who is hardly more 
than a name on the meagre pages of its annals, is none 
the less the civic father of your city. To use a learned 
word, he is your eponym, your name ancestor. Most 
so-called eponymous heroes — those whose names glorify 
clan, tribe or city — are mythical. They belong to the 
Romulus and Remus type, and John Quincy, certainly, 
has not escaped this phase of legendary obscurity. There 
was doubt even about the day of his birth, — ^yes, and the 
place of it, — till Mr. Adams, through his researches 

24 




JOHN QUINCV MONUMENT 



JOHN QUINCY 



brought the recorded facts to light and set them down in 
his "Three Episodes," that work of love, let me interject 
here, and not least among his gifts to the people of Quincy. 
Indeed, no one in this generation knew where John 
Quincy was buried till, after several vain efforts to find 
the spot, I was rew^arded by stumbling, one day in 1903, 
upon a fragment of a tombstone which marked his place 
of interment in the old burying-ground. It has since 
been made conspicuous by the erection of a memorial 
stone by the Quincy Historical Society, under whose 
auspices these services are held. To men now living, 
John Quincy himself may be unknown; but the genera- 
tion succeeding his exalted itself and him by giving the 
name of Quincy to the North Precinct of Braintree, 
when at last, by the Act of February 22, 1792, it was set 
off as a separate town. 

It is a fair inference from the proceedings which marked 
the naming of the town then called into existence, that 
a generation after his death John Quincy, in the esteem 
of his townsman, rivalled John Hancock, son of Brain- 
tree though he was, and, as chief executive of the Com- 
monwealth, at the crowning period of his fame and popu- 
larity. When, after much contention with the South 
Precinct, the new towm w^as about to be incorporated, the 
minister of the North Precinct Church, the Rev. Anthony 
Wibird, was requested to propose a name. This was the 
old-fashioned deference to the cloth, but that " inanimate 
old bachelor," as Abigail Adams had designated him, 
somewhat irreverently, twenty years before, manifestly 
not equal to the occasion, timidly shirked the responsi- 

25 



JOHN QUINCY 



bility. Possibly it was a case of the embarrassment of 
riches. Having so many famous men born into his 
parish, how was he to discriminate among them ? So 
the proposition was passed on to the Hon. Richard 
Cranch. His response was, — "Call it Quincy, in honor 
of John Quincy!" 

Later a number of aggressively independent citizens 
wondered if in this matter they had been sufficiently 
considered. Was this, indeed, their choice.? Might not 
Richard Cranch and many of the other elders be unduly 
attached to the memory of John Quincy.? 

" Some to the fascination of a name 
Surrender judgment hoodwinked." 

Why not honor a living man — one with a name as 
widely known.? Such was John Hancock, governor at 
the time, the first Governor of Massachusetts as a com- 
munity of Freemen. Let that fact not be forgotten. 
Then at the summit of his popularity, John Hancock 
had signed the act incorporating Quincy; and the affix- 
ing his name to it must have renewed in his mind, and 
in the minds of others, thoughts of his own intimate 
relations with the ancient town in which he was born, 
and from which he had taken to wife Dorothy Quincy. 
So a town meeting was called for May 14, 1792, at which 
the opposition name was proposed, — Hancock, a name 
to conjure with. The records show that the discussion 
which ensued was long and exciting,— at times, as one 
may guess, electric even. With two such names to 
choose between, great must have been the stimulus to 

26 



JOHN QUINCY 



town-meeting eloquence. Speak them, they may sound 
equally well to him in whose heart the familiar syllables 
of the one have not become as music. I frankly con- 
fess, as a judo;e in that controversy I am incapacitated. 
Either name, however, is nobly su(]jgestive. At the close 
of the debate the motion to petition the legislature for 
an alteration of name was defeated. The original 
appellation was thus confirmed. 

Nearly four generations of those here born and here 
dying have since passed on; and, were this community 
once more called upon now, as in May of 1792, to con- 
firm the name, it may confidently be asserted that its 
action would be unanimous. The title itself, has it not 
a distinctive character, and is it not pleasant to the ear.? 
and our name ancestor, the more he is scrutinized, is 
he not the more exalted ? Quincy, in truth, seems the 
one name congenial to the spirit and history of this local- 
ity. Deep-rooted in chivalrous Norman life, trans- 
planted here with the first settlers, associated with so 
much that is fine and high in those who bore it, and in 
utterance full and dignified, it tastes of the soil : it seems 
almost the natural product of environment, and not a 
title fixed by formal vote. Honored at home, abroad 
revered, it is a distinction to be called of Quincy. In- 
deed, some occult but prophetic fate appears to have 
intervened to stamp that name upon this place; for in 
a map published in England in 1775, seventeen years 
before the town was incorporated, the one word "Quin- 
zey," and that word alone, covers the territory included 
within your municipal bounds. 

27 



JOHN QUINCY 



Braintree, — old "Brantry," written in the town records 
as it was pronounced, — has, nevertheless, not faded from 
the memory of those of Quincy whose ancestors planted 
it here. Anglo-Saxon in its origin, the name Braintree 
links this American home with that England whence 
our fathers came. Still, the word Quincy throbs with 
a personal element. It carries us back to him and to 
those others who so long and honorably bore it, and 
whose virtues, we trust, as well as the name, have be- 
come "part of our life's unalterable good." What a 
power of enchantment the sound of it exercises over us 
at times, holding us in meditation upon the past we our- 
selves have known! — the lingering village life, almost 
ideal in its New England quaintness and culture, the 
homes of the dear and the intimate, the loved faces and 
forms long since vanished. Like a lamp, it lights that 
sacred past, and by its beams flung forward we seem to 
discern that larger city of the future which shall not un- 
worthily fulfil the promise of its origin. 

It is, perhaps, a trifle disconcerting that John Quincy 
should not have been a native of the place which is hon- 
ored by his name. It had long been conceived, and 
even stated by one of the earlier town historians, that he 
was born in the North Precinct of Braintree, on the 
estate originally granted to his ancestors. But it so 
chanced that he was really born in Boston; for in the 
records of that city we read, under the date 1689, the 
following: "John of Daniel and Anna Quinsie born 
July 21." This event had followed apparently soon 
upon the removal of his parents to the principal town of 

28 



JOHN QriNCY 



Massachusetts Bay, where the father entered upon the 
business of gold and silver smith, the nearest approach 
to a banker known to those days. We may, however, 
rest assured that the Boston-born John Quincy belonged 
indubitably to the stock identified from the beginning 
with our community. His father, Daniel Quincy, first 
drew breath in the old Quincy homestead, still standing. 
The parents of Daniel were Colonel Edmund Quincy, 
who with his first wife, Joanna Hoar, began their house- 
keeping in that same homestead immediately upon their 
marriage. Husband and wife both were notable per- 
sons; for Joanna was the daughter of another Joanna, 
the widow of Sheriff Hoar, of Gloucester, England. 
When her husband died, this elder Joanna emigrated to 
these shores with her five children, and settled in a home 
not far from where the present edifice of the original 
First Church now stands. Her last resting-place is in 
the old burying-ground, where, on a monument which 
marks the site, the virtues of "a Great Mother" are 
extolled in rude verse. She was distinguished then; she 
has become more distinguished since as "the common 
origin of an offspring at once numerous and notable." 
Besides the direct male line which issued in Senator 
Hoar and his brother Judge E. Rockwood Hoar, lines 
not less famous under other names have inherited, ap- 
parently, distinctive traits of a character nobly dominant. 
Such through his father Daniel (and nothing is here 
said of the Quincy line itself up to Edmund, the immi- 
grant) was the ancestry of John Quincy. Were his 
ancestry traced on his mother's side, it would be found 

29 



JOHN QUINCY 



hardly less distinguished, for she was daughter of the 
Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge. I cannot pause 
to give even a meagre list of the worthies this con- 
nection includes, but it is especially interesting to us to 
know that the wife of the Rev. Mr. Shepard was the 
daughter of Captain W. Tyng, Boston's richest merchant 
in that day, and the purchaser of Mt. Wollaston and 
other lands of the exile William Coddington. It was this 
purchase which eventually attracted John Quincy to Brain- 
tree; for, when his grandmother Shepard died, in 1709, 
he inherited Mt. Wollaston. 

Early possession of the broad acres of Mt. Wollaston, 
or Merry Mount, fruitful in themselves and beautiful for 
situation, together with an ancestry fairly high in social 
life, afforded in those days, more than now would be 
the case, vantage-ground of no slight potency from which 
to front the world. A merely ordinary man, so favored, 
not infrequently then commanded office and a degree of 
influence. But John Quincy, from the outset, developed 
power. He moved easily from one position to another, 
as though "half his strength he put not forth," until at 
last, before attaining more than middle life, he had served 
in about all the public offices to which a provincial might 
aspire. Everything he did seems to have been hand- 
somely done. As one observes him through his career, 
the thought will suggest itself that, on a wider field and 
under the stimulus of stronger forces, the response aroused 
in him would have been conspicuous, perhaps historic. 
"The narrow circle narrows, too, the mind. 
And man grows greater as his ends are great." 
30 



JOHN QUINCY 



"He belon<Ted to the class," writes the present C. F. 
Adams, "which in EnoLand produced John Ham})den, — 
the educated country gentlemen, the owners of the broad 
acres on which they dwelt. Following no profession, but 
going up to Parliament year after year, they were the 
loyal, ingrained representatives of the communities of 
which they were a part. Of these men, Washington was 
a Virginia offshoot. He represented them in their highest 
phase of development under Southern surroundings, — 
plain, true, straightforward, self-respecting, gifted with 
that perfectly balanced common-sense which in its way is 
a sort of genius. Favorable circumstances, always availed 
of, brought Washington to the front, and have made 
of him an American immortality. Yet in America, at 
that time, as in the Stoke-Poges churchyard, there w^ere, 
doubtless, many men who contained within themselves 
the possibilities of a Hampden, a Milton, or a Cromwell. 
That John Quincy contained those elements cannot be 
asserted," concludes Mr. Adams, "for of him nothing 
now^ remains except a name and a few dates." Even 
wdien we include such facts as may have been brought to 
light since Mr. Adams wrote these words, reflecting the 
personality of John Quincy, little enough truly abides. 
But from the things done in his day, when he was the 
chief figure in the legislature; from the measures wdiich 
promoted the rights of the Provinces, we may not unsafely 
infer that here was a masterful leader, one to be counted 
among the men of distinct mark in the Province. It was 
he and men of his type who created and fostered the con- 
ditions which favored in later days the growth of the tree 

31 



JOHN QUINCY 



of liberty. One is tempted to say, " No John Quincy and 
his compatriots, then no James Otis, and no Sam Adams ; 
no Lexington, Concord or Bunker Hill." Be it always 
borne in mind that subsequent revolutions called glo- 
rious are virtually fought out in the undramatic and 
forgotten days before the far-flung battle line claims the 
final, the supreme sacrifice. The spirit which resisted 
the Stamp Act, and which blazed out in a flame of fire 
in 1775, was alight and glimmered steadily through 
the long years which saw the inflexible safeguard- 
ing of provincial privilege by men of the John Quincy 

type. 

So far as it can be discerned, it is well, therefore, to 
trace the growth and career of this stanch provincial 
patriot "insistent for freedom." His father, Daniel 
Quincy, died when John, his only son, was hardly more 
than a year old. A daughter, Anna, had been born 
some time before; but where the widow, with her two 
children, now made her home, we have no means of 
knowing. Not improbably she went back to her mother 
in Cambridge. Later she may have gone to Braintree 
at the solicitation of her husband's kindred, to be house- 
keeper to the Rev. Moses Fiske, the second settled min- 
ister of this First Church. His wife had died in 1692 
after bearing him fourteen children. A housekeeper, 
past doubt, was a crying need. At all events, she and 
the minister were married in the tenth year of her widow- 
hood; and the marriage took place in Braintree, which 
bears out the supposition that Mrs. Quincy was a resident 
of that town. The record of it is as follows: "The Rev. 

32 



JOHN QUINCY 



Moses Fiske, & Mrs. Anna Quinsey were married ye 7th 
January 1700 by Saml Sewall Esqr." 

This, then, is probably the date at which John Quincy, 
now eleven years old, became earliest identified with the 
town which subsequently he served through a long life. 
With the introduction there could have gone little that 
was exhilarating. In the piously ordered home of the 
minister John Quincy was numbered with the four boys 
and two or three girls who remained of the fourteen 
children born of one mother in less than twenty years. 
Mistress Anna Quincy-Fiske added two more, and the 
house of the minister was small. The property of Charles 
H. Spear, it is still to be seen on Franklin Street, and it 
is otherwise celebrated for the "highly respectable school 
kept in it for many years by Mr. Joseph Marsh, in which 
John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were prepared for 
college." To exchange this home for Harvard College 
could surely have been no small relief to the young John 
Quincy. He entered the college about three years after 
his mother's marriage, and was graduated in 1708. The 
same year, on July 24, his mother died. Thus in a 
measure cast loose from Braintree, he might well have 
settled with the Shepards, his mother's people, in Cam- 
bridge; but, at this critical moment, the cast of fortune 
decided him to remain in his father's native town, for 
the next year, 1709, he fell heir to Mt. Wollaston. 
Soon he went to live there, his older sister going with 
him, perhaps; for a letter written in 1712, by Edmund 
Quincy, speaks of " John a man grown and living in our 
town.'* It is in the same year that a pew is built for him 

33 



JOHN QUINCY 



in the meeting-house. By this time, or a little later, he 
must have erected the dwelling of Colonial type in which 
he continued to live until his death. Afterwards occupied 
by his son Norton, it stood on the Hough's Neck and 
Germantown road till 1852. Marriage followed in 1715, 
when Elizabeth Norton, daughter of the Rev. John 
Norton, third pastor of the old church in Hingham, 
became his wife. The date of Colonel Quincy's mar- 
riage I have not been able to ascertain, but there is on 
record, in Hingham, the following notice of the publica- 
tion of the banns: "Col. John Quincy of Braintree and 
Elizabeth Norton of Hingham int of Marriage Sept. 3d 
1715"; and this, "Elizabeth Norton Pub. Sep 3d 1715 
Col John Quincy of Braintree." As was then the custom, 
the marriage probably took place two or three days after 
the notices were published. On Tuesday, October 4, 
of that year. Judge Sewall records that he gave John 
Quincy a "Psalm-book covered with Turkey-Leather for 
his Mistress." 

As early as his twenty-sixth year, we thus see, John 
Quincy is called "colonel," — a first dignity conferred 
apparently by popular brevet, for, actually, he ranked 
only as major in that Suffolk regiment of which his uncle, 
Edmund Quincy, was lieutenant-colonel. But the early 
bestowal of the grade of major was highly complimentary, 
and meant social distinction and political advancement, 
as was illustrated in the case of John Hull, the thriving 
Boston merchant, who, chosen corporal in the same 
regiment, praised God "for giving him acceptance and 
favor in the eyes of the people, and as a fruit thereof 

34 




LINDKNS PLANTED HV JOHN (^IINCN TO 
I-RONT HIS HDMK 



JOHN QUINCY 



advancement above his deserts." In the case of Major 
John Quincy promotion in other lines followed rapidly; 
and on Aug. 3, 1716, "The inhabitants of Braintree 
regularly assembled then chose Major John Quincy 
moderator for that day." Already he was treading in 
the footsteps of his uncle, eminent in many lines and 
later called "the judge." For eleven years "the judge" 
had been moderator and representative; but the nephew 
was now to surpass him, and all others of his name, in 
length of public service. Early appointed a justice of 
the peace, he was next commissioned as special justice; 
then a justice of the quorum; and, finally, a justice through 
the Province. In 1717, a year after he was first chosen 
moderator, he was elected to represent Braintree in the 
General Court. Again elected in 1719, his fellow-citizens 
having now had an opportunity to judge of his quality, 
he was launched on his unparalleled career both as per- 
manent representative and as moderator. For twenty- 
one successive years — that is, from 1719 to 1740 — he was 
returned to the House of Representatives with unfailing 
regularity; and during even a longer period he was 
chosen moderator of town meetings with almost equal 
regularity. Still higher honors were accorded to him. His 
personality, his character and judgment, and his sturdy })ro- 
vincial patriotism so impressed his fellow-representatives 
that they elected him speaker of the House from 1727 to 
1741, a period of fourteen years. A tribute from town 
and Province which stamps him as no common man. 

The selection of a member of the Great and General 
Court to the important position of speaker was then no 

35 



JOHN QUINCY 



mere matter of compliment. The representatives of 
the Province of Massachusetts Bay had a battle to fight. 
Their ancient chartered liberties, their rights as freemen, 
were at stake. They required in their speaker a saga- 
cious, an intrepid, and a masterful leader. Their spokes- 
man had to be a representative New England man, — one 
of a people among whom *'a fierce spirit of liberty had 
sprung up." It may, therefore, safely be assumed that 
John Quincy presided with firmness and dignity, that 
he had those qualities which Richard H. Dana said were 
sought for in the speaker of the House of Commons, — a 
man recognized by common consent as a gentleman, 
"and of such manners and sentiments that on any ques- 
tion of decorum or of personal rights or obligation in 
the House his word would be law." That is much, and 
may suflfice to distinguish a man as speaker in the rou- 
tine of ordinary times; but such qualities alone did not 
raise a man to the level of the exigencies of that turbu- 
lent period of which Governor Thomas Hutchinson, in 
his contemporary history, declared that more perilous 
contentions and confusions had not existed since the 
Antinomian Controversy, when Sir Harry Vane was de- 
feated and abandoned the Colony, and our townsmen, 
Wheelwright and Coddington, were driven into exile. 
Hot with smouldering passions, the atmosphere threat- 
ened at any moment to blaze into fire. On the floor of 
the legislature the contest for human rights was being 
fought out. 

The colonial charter and the system which it expressed 
had now become a thing of the long past, but the colo- 

36 



JOHN QUINCY 



nists, though inhabitants of a Province, as it was called, 
continued to regard their relations to the mother country 
as those prescribed in the charter of King Charles; and, 
if their "rights as Englishmen" were obstructed, they, in 
strict accordance w^ith British constitutional theories, 
attributed their wrongs to over-zealous exercise of the 
king's prerogative by Tory placemen. As a matter of 
fact, however, through a century of self-reliant town 
government, the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay had 
grown beyond that stage in which subordination to a 
distant authority, disposed to exploit them for its own 
benefit, was longer tolerable. They felt competent to 
govern themselves. The royal governors with their 
power of veto were an intrusion. The English Board of 
Trade, with its monopolistic navigation and trade laws, 
hampered natural development. The situation was thus 
prolific of misunderstandings. The documents of that 
forgotten time reveal royal governors genuinely aston- 
ished, as they found themselves baflfled by what they re- 
garded as the stubborn contentiousness of the colonists. 
On the other hand, these last were in a state of con- 
stant indignation and resentment over what they con- 
sidered unwarrantable invasions of rights and privileges. 
Altogether, the crisis was one which called for a clear- 
minded and well-balanced mediator and leader; and 
such John Quincy proved. As a contemporary wrote, 
the speaker "had a high sense of his accountableness to 
the Supreme Governor of the world for the trusts imposed 
in him, and studiously avoided an ensnaring dependency 
on any man, and whatever that should tend to lay him 

37 



JOHN QUINCY 



under any disadvantage in the discharge of his duty." 
Thus furnished, John Quincy responded fully to the 
exigencies of the hour. With an open mind, he appre- 
ciated the right intentions of the royal governors when 
they acted within the terms of their instructions. He 
saw what we in the clear light of this day now see, — that 
their faults were mainly due to "unconscious ignorance 
and not conscious malice." This explains why not one 
of the governors who came and went while he was 
speaker vetoed his election. Indeed, on one occasion 
when the House, carried off its feet by a paper money 
delusion, undertook to elect another man its speaker. 
Governor Belcher would not be content till Colonel 
Quincy was put back in his old place. At the same time, 
unaffected by the geniality of a provincial court life, with 
its "far-off splendors of the throne," he remained the 
strong, simple New England man, "ever approving him- 
self," to quote once more our contemporary writer, "a 
true friend to the interest and the prosperity of the prov- 
ince, a zealous advocate for, and vigorous defender of, 
its liberties and privileges." 

From the very year that John Quincy entered upon his 
duties as speaker, the conflict between the crown and 
the colonies deepened. The king and his council then 
began the ominous work of strengthening their colonial 
policy; and, as Hutchinson observes, the House on its 
side discovered a disposition to "amplify their jurisdic- 
tion." The ultimate dispute was over the granting of 
a fixed salary to the governors during the years of their 
administration. To us the issue bears a trivial, a sordid 

38 



JOHN QUINCY 



aspect; but, in fact, the money consideration was of 
comparatively little moment. The representatives were 
convinced that, if they voted a salary fixed in amount 
and for a certain time, the governor would be independent 
of them, and look solely to England for instructions and 
support. He would be encouraged to regard them as 
a dependent people, and to appoint judges, customs offi- 
cers, justices of the peace, and other officials with the one 
thought of their loyalty. So, from time to time, the 
House voted sums of money for the use of the governor, 
omitting, however, all mention of salary or term of grants; 
and the sums thus voted were significantly proportional 
to the good will evinced by the governor, or the hope of 
that good will. The representatives of His Majesty were 
needy, but they hardly dared accept money thus doled 
out. Their instructions forbade them, "it being abso- 
lutely necessary," as the Lords in Council declared, "for 
your Majesty's service that the independence of the 
Governor upon the assembly should be preserved," and 
of the utmost importance to resist the power contended 
for by the Massachusetts legislature "to bring the gov- 
ernor appointed by your Majesty over them into a de- 
pendency on their good will for his subsistence, which 
would manifestly tend to a lessening of his authority, and 
consequently of that dependence which this colony ought 
to have upon the crown of Great Britain, by bringing 
the whole legislative power into the hands of the people." 
Governors appointed because of their supposed strength 
of will met wills no less inflexible than their own. About 
the time that Colonel Quincy assumed the duties of 

39 



JOHN QUINCY 



speakership, Governor Burnet began his administration. 
Hutchinson describes him as a person not "easily moved 
from a resokition he had once taken up." No sooner 
had Burnet begun his activities than "the House now 
thought themselves obliged to be more particular than 
they had been fully to assert their rights." Within a year 
or so he passed away, his death hastened, as Hutchinson 
insinuates, by the effect of the controversy upon his 
spirits. "He did not know the temper of the New 
England people. They have a strong sense of liberty 
and are more easily drawn than driven." Of his suc- 
cessor. Governor Belcher, there was but one question 
asked by the appointing power, — Would he be able "to 
influence the people to a compliance with the king's 
instructions".^ He came to proffer one more opportu- 
nity of paying due regard to the royal wisdom, "the last 
signification of our royal pleasure to them upon this sub- 
ject." Belcher first appealed to the House, and then 
tried to dragoon it; but it would not yield an inch. In 
utter despair he petitioned the home government for a 
relaxation of its instructions, and for permission to receive 
for a year or two the grants of money on the legislature's 
own terms. And thus the matter rested until the whirl- 
wind of the Revolution brought about a new alignment of 
the antagonistic forces. 

From the moment in which he first seated himself in 
the speaker's chair, his oflSce brought Colonel Quincy 
face to face with the royal governors. He it was who so 
often led the members of the House when they marched 
from their own chamber in the old State House to wait 

40 



JOHN QUINCY 



upon his Excellency in his council chamber. He it was 
who, conspicuously advanced, voiced a people's aspira- 
tions, and presented their sturdy rejection of measures. 
He it was who, in the forefront, received not only His 
Majesty's instructions from the representative of royalty, 
but also his threatenings. "I must tell you," Governor 
Belcher declared on one of these occasions, "that it is 
with the greatest surprise and concern to me that you 
seem so willing at present to run Hazard of the fatal 
consequences which your proceedings (in my opinion) 
will certainly produce, and which you and your posterity 
will groan under when it may be too late to find redress." 
In response. Speaker Quincy calmly requests that the 
governor's words be given him in writing, to insure fair 
consideration. The members then ceremoniously return 
to their own assembly room, and on this, or some other 
occasion, answer, that "by refusing to disburse moneys 
for defence as the House desired, his Excellency ])ut 
them in the deplorable dilemma either to part with their 
ancient liberties and usages, ... or to lie in this ex- 
posed condition. This is truly shocking." 

That campaign was ceaselessly continued throughout 
John Quincy's speakership. "To one who really knew," 
writes J. A. Doyle, "what political forces were at work 
beneath the surface it might well seem the little cloud like 
a man's hand, which held stored within it the whole 
storm of Revolution." The same principles were in- 
volved. All that James Otis and Sam Adams claimed in 
the next generation was now insisted uj)on in the face 
of governors especially appointed to exact submission. 

41 



JOHN QUINCY 



If another element were needed to increase the strain 
and stress of that period, it was furnished in full measure 
by the unsettling influence of the great earthquake. 
This occurred during the very year in which John Quincy 
was elected speaker; and, with the heaving and trem- 
bling of the solid earth, all things seemed unstable. The 
superstition of the age accepted the phenomenon as the 
warning of an angry God, and countless were the infer- 
ences drawn from it. Manifestly, the times were out of 
joint. Any reverse, any visitation, might be expected. 
This state of feeling drew on the "Great Awakening," 
with Jonathan Edwards for its relentless interpreter and 
prophet. It was during the long speakership of Colonel 
Quincy that the wild commotion of this unparalleled 
religious revival reached its climax, and passed away. 
While it lasted, it swept into its streaming extrava- 
gances things political, financial, social. There was 
hardly a line of thought or action it did not deflect from 
its usual and rational course. We can easily believe 
that under these circumstances the most self-contained 
and far-seeing men only could maintain the direct 
forthright, and continue trustworthy guides. 

Not on the wide waters of world-politics, not so com- 
pletely as Pitt, was John Quincy "the pilot who weath- 
ered the storm;" but this, at least, can be said of him, — 
that no man of his time surpassed him in compelling 
sagacity of moral judgment, or in solid integrity of char- 
acter. Like others of his name and kindred, he revealed 
a generous competency in the performance of whatever 
public duties were intrusted to him. A Marblehead 

42 




OLD (HANCOCK) MEETING-HOUSE 



EAST -60 feet 




Ocjcoiis' Scat. 



— 1 




1 1 




( 1 




1 1 




( 1 




1 1 



r 


u Men's Gallery 












41 


jj 




•11 















ElKnrn 

Niirhlin 

Kile 



S3. 



Mose» 
Belcher, 
Jr 



.illen • 



jii 



"i-3 



TRONT niMiR 

Gruuiid !• loor, when dedicated in 1732 



JOHN QUINCY 



skipper, who was placed in charge of an ocean liner, was 
asked if he did not feel a bit put to it to sail so great a 
craft. *'No, sir," was the reply, " a Marblehead Captain 
is always bigger than his ship." So of our Quincy 
worthies, whether elected to govern town meetings, or 
to shape the measure of state assemblies; whether chosen 
to contend with kings, to administer this republic, to 
arbitrate questions dividing great nations, they always 
approved themselves level with the appointed task. 

Such was the effective energy of John Quincy that it 
not only compassed the admirable performance of the 
speaker's duties, but sufficed for arduous labors on most 
of the important committees ordered in his day. A 
committee, for instance, was appointed to reduce into 
some sort of system the chaos of a fluctuating currency. 
He was its chairman; and the problem which confronted 
him was indeed a difficult one, — to fix a standard of value 
in the absence of silver and gold, during a time when old 
tenor bills and new tenor bills were sliding up and down, — 
though most generally down, — while bargaining was yet 
in process. In such high estimation was Colonel Quincy's 
judgment in financial matters held that his own town, 
in its particular perplexities, never failed to claim his 
assistance. He was also chairman of the legislative 
committee charged with the draughting of instructions 
for the agent of the Province at the court of Great Britain. 
He was on military committees, as befitted one who held 
the rank of colonel. He was called upon to see to the 
repairs on Castle ^Yilliam when war with Spain was 
declared. He was commissioned to allay the threatened 

4S 



JOHN QUINCY 



tumult of the land bankers. So, not unnaturally, his 
contemporaries take pains to record his "constant appli- 
cation in the despatch of public business"; nor did the 
House fail to vote that "there be paid four shillings 
per diem to the Hon. John Quincy, Speaker of the 
House, for every day of his attendance." When ill, it 
is to be presumed, he would be required to live on his 
private means. An item in the House Journal indicated 
one such absence from illness on his part, and at the 
same time affords incidentally an illuminating glimpse of 
that "insolence of office" to which the House was now 
and then subjected. At the opening of the session in 
1739 the following is set down: "Inasmuch as this 
House have been informed that the Hon. John Quincy, 
Esq., their Speaker, is so indisposed that he can't con- 
veniently attend the public service. Therefore voted that 
Nathaniel Cunningham, Mr. James Allen, and Mr. 
Thomas Rowell, be a committee to repair to the Speaker's 
lodgings and make Inquiry as to the State of his Health, 
that so the House may properly proceed to the choice of 
another Speaker to take the chair in case he cannot 
attend." His illness was prohibitive of his attendance; 
so Ebenezer Pomroy was chosen speaker, and a com- 
mittee was appointed to acquaint his Excellency, the 
Governor, "who returned they had been at His Excel- 
lency's Seat, and informed him by his servant they had 
a Message from the House of Representatives to deliver 
His Excellency, who sent them in answer. He received no 
Message out of the Chair. Upon which the Committee ac- 
quainted the Governor's Secretary with the subject-matter 

44 



JOHN QUINCY 



of the message, and urged the Necessity of delivering it: 
who quickly returned from the Governor, made answer 
that His Excellency did not care; he would receive no 
message out of his Chair." The speaker, let it be noted, 
was still ill when the House was prorogued in January. 

Perhaps the most interesting among the lesser respon- 
sibilities of John Quincy was his care of the Ponkapoag 
Indians. That this duty should fall to him, and that 
he should fulfil it so conscientiously for over a score of 
years, bears testimony to his character. These Indians, 
the remnant of the tribe of the Massachusetts which 
once possessed the land about the Blue Hills, were being 
rapidly despoiled of the little left them. Their white 
neighbors were annexing their meadows, their orchards, 
and their timber. In their distress they petitioned the 
legislature of 1727 that "Major John Quincy, Esq., be 
fully empowered and authorized to look after us in all 
things." He was of Braintree, they on their reserva- 
tion in Stoughton, separated from him by a dozen miles 
or so of rough country — a tramp even an Indian would 
not altogether fancy. But they had heard of his plain 
honesty and valued judgment, and Major John Quincy 
they would have. He accepted the trust; and, through 
all the twenty-one years of official relations, he dealt pa- 
tiently with these wards of his "as under the strongest 
obligations to be faithful." Often, when the funds which 
were at his disposal were exhausted, he borrowed from 
his own pocket to meet needy circumstances. He was 
resolute from the beginning not to sell the Indians any 
strong drink. He did what he could to encourage them 

45 



JOHN QUINCY 



in their religious duties. He defeated the schemes of 
all those who would plunder them. In the long and 
woful chapter of our Indian spoliations it is a relief to 
come upon this record of just and humane supervision 
and guardianship. 

Not until lately has it been given us to get an inside 
view of these most creditable relations. Hardly a single 
line of Colonel Quincy's with regard to them was known 
to be extant. Indeed, it was doubtful whether speci- 
mens of his handwriting in any form, (except an occa- 
sional signature) or on any subject had come down to 
this day. A continued research has, however, now been 
rewarded with the discovery of literally yards of his com- 
position, hidden in that scrap-bag of the past known as 
the Massachusetts State Archives. Mainly concerned 
with the Ponkapoag trust, in this treasure- trove are two 
long reports of expenditures of moneys committed to 
Colonel Quincy; also a convincing and luminous answer 
to a forged petition of those "men of Stoughton of no 
character" who were itching to exploit the Indians again. 
Finally, there also is his letter of resignation to Governor 
Shirley, written in 1747. 

These reports are at least well calculated to excite 
sympathy with the toil undergone by the writer. I 
measured one, and found it to contain some five feet ten 
inches of wide, closely written pages. It is the careful, 
itemized account of a conscientious man. From pence 
to pounds, from corn to clothing, the items are put down 
with dates and names; while the names excite wonder 
that he had the patience to spell them. Amos Ahauton, 

46 



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7 






'frcr^i^SP 






^j:oj^^^^/ 



^>,r«^-;^ 



C:/x 












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i-f^U.: ..<^/f?) nJr ."^ /r^c /y^^7U'i^ JrC^7 ..//'^/ /S^C^' 






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RESIGNATION OF GUARDIANSHIP OF TONKAPOAGS 



JOHN QUINCY 



Mary Sycamugf]^, Hezekiah Squaminofj^g, Abigail Quock, 
Robert Mummentaug; one cannot but ask, — Did he 
really know them all, and call them all by their individual 
names? It seems not unlikely; for, certainly, he saw 
them often enough. Not a week seems to have gone by 
without its party of Indians striking the trail for Colonel 
Quincy's farm. He did not dare to give them much 
food at a time, for fear they would waste it; nor much 
money, for fear they would squander it on drink. The 
much-enduring guardian suffered for his carefulness. 
"From Ponkapog to Pesth" is to us a familiar j)lirase. 
In that day it might well have been inverted, — the pest 
from Ponkapoag! Yet from all that appears, no matter 
how frequent the visitation, both Colonel Quincy and 
his wife never failed to treat kindly the red men, their 
squaws, and their papooses. In one of those letters re- 
cently found. Colonel Quincy writes, "they have always 
had what was convenient of beer and cyder when they 
came to his house, which has been very often, without 
being charged anything therefor." In the fishing season 
they came to the shore near his home where they "camped 
for weeks, burning up his wood, and sometimes not 
sparing his fencing stuff, . . . for which there was not the 
least consideration made." When, at last, he resigns 
his trust, which he has "with considerable Labour and 
Pains Discharged to ^the Acceptance of this Hon'ble 
Court," he does so, not for his own ease, but because 
"several of the Indians who survive are aged and infirm 
and so unable to come to your Memorialist for supplies 
as formerly, by reason of their distance from him." 

47 



JOHN QUINCY 



We now come to a passage in the life of Colonel Quincy 
in which his career as a public man suffered sudden 
eclipse. He, too, was subjected to one of those tests 
which, soon or late, few political characters escape. In 
his case it set the seal on his patriotism and his cour- 
age, — it showed him one of that rare class of men long 
ago, and for all time, described by Horace, — 

Justum et tenacem propositi virum 
Non civium ardor prava jubentium 
Mente quatit solida, . . . 
Si fractus illabatur orbis, 
Impavidum ferient ruinse. 

Colonel Quincy, at the commencement of the session of 
1740, had received all the votes cast for speaker, except- 
ing one only, — the vote presumably deposited by him- 
self; a unanimity of choice with which he had been 
honored almost every year since first he was summoned 
to the chair. At the next session his familiar form was 
not to be seen; nor did the name of the "Honorable John 
Quincy, Esq., of Braintree," appear on the roll of the 
House. A premonition of the sweeping changes then 
wrought, like the far-drawn retreat of the waters from 
the ocean shore which marks the oncoming of a tidal 
wave, disturbed the previous session of 1739. At that 
time, "when the House of Representatives came together 
they chose the Honorable Paul Dudley, Esq., Speaker by 
a great majority of votes." The governor, however, in- 
terposed with his prerogative, vetoing the choice. Then 
the House, docile to a degree, voted again, "when it 

48 



JOHN QUIXCY 



appeared that the Honourable John Quincy, Esq., was 
chosen by a considerable majority of the votes." 

What was the cause of this sudden withdrawal in the 
Great and General Court of confidence in the man who 
had been elected its speaker through fourteen successive 
years ? Did he suffer from the suspicion that he deferred 
more to the royal governor and his placemen than was 
befitting ? On this point the provincial representatives 
were extremely sensitive. A former speaker, Elisha 
Cooke, the younger, who was a stanch champion of 
provincial rights, fell under the swift censure of the 
Boston voters at the mere insinuation that he welcomed 
too eagerly the administration's favors. Or was it simply 
that Colonel Quincy was in his turn a victim of the 
craving for change, that notorious weakness of democ- 
racies ? 

The situation is made doubly perplexing by the action 
of his ow^n neighbors, the voters of Braintree, in refusing, 
at the next election, to return him as their representative. 
What is the true explanation.? A tradition has always 
prevailed hereabouts that the political commotion which 
w'rought so complete and sudden an alteration in the 
career of John Quincy was caused by the intrigues of 
a certain Joseph Gooch, an exploiting politician, — a 
startling intrusion then of that disorganizing phenomenon 
which has now become so common a peril. This tradi- 
tion, however, when closely scrutinized, melts away. It 
is not, in the first place, easy to believe that the voters 
of the Braintree of that period were so fickle that an up- 
start politician by his manipulations, however cunning, 

49 



JOHN QUINCY 



could demoralize in a day the loyalty of years. To con- 
ceive this of the ages which we have regarded as simpler 
and truer than our own would be, to say the least, a 
severe wrench to the feelings. Furthermore, it so hap- 
pens that, as a matter of fact, it was not Gooch who was 
preferred to Colonel Quincy on this occasion, but Cap- 
tain William Hunt. 

We are thus forced to look elsewhere for adequate 
interpretation. With a hint from the writings of Mr. 
Andrew McFarland Davis, who has searched deeply into 
several episodes of that distant day, we find the explana- 
tion not in a political flurry, nor primarily in a contro- 
versy with the king and his ministers, but in a most 
unlooked-for agitation, — a wildcat banking craze! In 
this day few have heard of that project for the issuance 
of cheap currency here in Massachusetts known as the 
Land Bank and Manufactory Company. Fewer still 
realize the wide commotion it caused. Yet John Adams 
records that " the act to destroy the Land Bank Scheme 
raised a greater ferment in this Province than the Stamp 
Act did." It was an eighteenth-century fiat-money de- 
lusion, closely resembling, in its fundamental principles, 
the similar crazes which have disturbed us in recent years. 
Private gain and supposed patriotism were blended in 
the eighteenth-century projects, just as they were in 
those of the last half of the nineteenth century. The 
mixture, indeed, is not uncommon; and, skilfully com- 
pounded, can surely be relied on at almost any time to 
rouse in many a resolute bearing and lofty sentiments. 
The eighteenth-century scheme, revealing unmistakable 

50 




MOUNT WOLLASTON (MERRYMiH-XT) IX kich, 





MOUNT WOLLASTOX IX i83g 



CITY si:al 



JOHN QUINCY 



aspects of a social antagonism, swept through the Prov- 
ince. The people — that is, the farmers, artisans, and 
smaller tradesmen — became roused over it to a fighting 
pitch. They accordingly packed the House of Repre- 
sentatives with its partisans. Governor Thomas Hutch- 
inson subsequently wrote, in his history of that period, 
"it appeared that by far the majority of the representa- 
tives for 1740 [the year in which John Quincy was 
dropped] were subscribers to, or favorers of, the scheme, 
and they have ever since been distinguished by the name 
of the Land Bank House." 

The notion of a bank of issue, the currency of which 
should be based on land values, had haunted the Province 
for years. Of silver and gold there was little in circu- 
lation; and that little was constantly, under the ordinary 
and now well-understood conditions of trade, drained out 
of the country. There was no pretence that the paper 
currency, which displaced it, was redeemable, for the 
expenses of the government were met by the emission of 
bills of public credit. When these bills were emitted, a 
specific pledge was made of a "fund" to be provided for 
retiring the emission; this fund to be derived from taxes, 
which were to be imposed at a future time. Taxes were 
therefore imposed to retire bills previously issued to 
meet public expenses, which, in turn, were again met by 
the emission of more bills. As the result of such a finan- 
cial policy systematically pursued, the currency not 
unnaturally became thoroughly demoralized. The out- 
standing bills of credit steadily declined in value, until it 
became obvious that a financial crisis of some sort was 

51 



JOHN QUINCY 



imminent. Under such circumstances other cure-all 
panaceas and quack nostrums are always in order. It 
was so after the French wars of the eighteenth century-. 
It was so during the War of Independence. It was again 
so during all the forty years which followed the War of 
Secession in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth- 
century experience, as might surely have been anticipated, 
the man arrived, nostrum in hand, as the fateful hour was 
about to strike. The existing evil was to be remedied 
through an ingenious revival and adaptation of the old 
Land Bank idea. John Coleman — a needy Boston mer- 
chant, Hutchinson called him — was to create, with others 
who might join him, a people's cheap currency, — a fiat 
money, as it has since been termed, founded on the value 
of farms and homes and manufactures. The scheme 
was fairly redolent of that form of popular favor which 
frequently assumes the name and guise of patriotism. 
The faith which the people had in themselves and in 
their native land was to be imparted to bank issues of 
paper money. The notes of Coleman's Land Bank, 
as good as gold, were to supersede the use of hard money. 
So John Coleman and others, to the number of some 
three hundred and ninety-five, presented to the legisla- 
ture their scheme, which provided, originally, for the 
emission of £150,000 in currency secured on lands and 
commodities of a value at once substantial and visible 
to all, and which could not take to themselves wings. 
So alluring w^as the project to its devisers, and, withal, so 
rapidly did its popularity increase, that, while yet the 
legislature was cautiously examining into its merits, other 

52 



JOHN QUINCY 



subscribers, numbering eventually over a thousand, were 
added to the list of its promoters. Mainly "yeomen," 
these last did not, as a rule, subscribe individually for 
over £100 of the currency. In exchange for it they 
gave mortgages on their farms and homes. Braintree 
contributed fourteen such subscribers, among whom were 
William Hunt, Amos Stetson, Thomas Crosby, Benjamin 
Beale, Danl. Thayer, and Moses Belcher, Jr. 

The leading merchants and other men of business 
experience in Boston and adjacent towns saw at once 
the perilous character of the Land Bank. In a declara- 
tion headed by Peter Faneuil, and which numbered 
among its signers members of some of Braintree's first 
families, such as Edmund and Josiah Quincy and the 
son of the speaker, Norton Quincy, warning was given 
that those whose names were affixed would not receive 
the notes of the Land Bank in trade or any other busi- 
ness transaction whatever, as they could not but believe 
that the scheme would be of "pernicious consequence.'* 
This announcement called forth passionate objections 
from the Land-bankers, the character of which may be 
gathered from a communication printed in one of the 
papers of that day, the diminutive News Letter. This 
communication also reveals among the people of the 
Province a growing sense of social distinctions. The line 
drawn between the so-called "patriot" and the "loyalist" 
was becoming confused with a new and horizontal rift 
of cleavage, now for the first time beginning to divide 
men of substance from the struggling farmers and arti- 
sans. The opposition merchants are many, says the 

53 



JOHN QUINCY 



writer to the News Letter, and some are very rich, "but 
then it must not be supposed that they are of equal weight 
with all the rest of the Province. If you consider how 
they obtained their influence and the ill use made of it, 
you won't wonder we begin to be tired of it.'* The "ill 
use" here alluded to was plainly pointed out in the claim 
made in the letter that the Land Bank bills would "pre- 
vent borrowing money and paying exorbitant interest." 

Jonathan Belcher, the governor of the Province from 
1730 to 1741, early showed himself wholly opposed to 
the bank. His objections also were well founded; and, 
at the outset, no personal element confused the issue. 
The royal governor was quick to take advantage of 
certain phrases contained in a report made by a com- 
mittee of the legislature in March, 1740, adverse to the 
scheme. These he embodied in a proclamation, represent- 
ing that the notes would " have a great tendency to en- 
damage His Majesty's good subjects as to their property," 
and consequently warning all against receiving or pass- 
ing them. The House of Representatives rapidly began 
to reflect the temper spreading throughout the Com- 
monwealth, and to take tone therefrom. According to 
Hutchinson, "perhaps the major part in number of the 
inhabitants of the Province openly or secretly are well 
wishers of the" bank. Consequently, no matter how 
strenuously the governor urged the representatives, they 
could not be induced to pass any decisive judgment upon 
the scheme nor forbid the issue of the notes. This 
course, on their part, served only to incite the governor 
to a policy yet more aggressive in character. During 

54 



JOHN QT INCY 



the recess of the House, striking right and left as witli a 
bludgeon, he issued proclamation after proclamation, in 
a vain endeavor to crush the portentous and fast-waxing 
danger. In arbitrary and characteristic fashion he tlireat- 
ened with dismissal any oflScer of the government — all, 
indeed, who held commissions or licenses of any de- 
scription — who should countenance the obnoxious bank, 
or honor its notes. Attorneys were strictly admonished 
to discourage the circulation of the prohibited currency 
and to exercise an espionage over justices of the peace; 
and justices of the peace, similarly warned, were urged 
to keep a close watch over taverners and others. Delin- 
quent military officials were singled out to be disciplined. 
Colonel Quincy and others high in rank were instructed 
by letter to inquire into the conduct of all holding com- 
missions under them in regard to their attitude toward 
the Land Bank; and such among them as persisted in 
receiving or passing its bills were to be dismissed. Great 
was the consequent consternation. A deep searching of 
hearts was all-pervasive; as also a painful weighing of 
convictions over against the assurance of the placemen's 
present comfort. As if to inject the last drop of bitter- 
ness into the controversy, the informer was abroad; and 
so from the Berkshire Hills to Cape Cod confusion 
reigned. 

The mass of the community, victims of a "people's 
currency" and cheap-money delusion, believed that the 
Land Bank would prove a blessing, and as such would 
save the Province from grave disasters. This conviction 
was also shared by not a few of the official class. Among 



JOHN QUINCY 



such was Samuel Adams, father of the patriot of the same 
name. This Samuel Adams held a commission as jus- 
tice of the peace, and, immediately upon the issuance of 
the proclamation of the governor aimed at those so 
placed, he, with a fellow-official named Choate, wrote 
to Belcher. In their missive they bluntly and boldly 
informed him that holding office under him was "made 
inconsistent with Prosecuting the Manufactory^ Scheme 
in which we are concerned and whereon in our humble 
opinions the interest of our Native Country so much 
depends as to require the utmost of our endeavors to pro- 
mote the same, Therefore we do resign our commissions 
of Trusts." Later the governor, taking no other notice 
of these resignations than to allude to the presumptuous 
defence of the bank in which these officials "are deter- 
mined to persist," dismissed Adams and Choate con- 
tumeliously from their positions. None the less, Samuel 
Adams, as one of its directors, "prosecuted" the scheme 
most zealously; somewhat, be it added, to the em- 
barrassment of his son financially in later days. 

Through eleven troubled years Jonathan Belcher was 
royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; 
and, subsequently transferred to New Jersey, he for ten 
years, and until his death in 1757, administered the 
affairs of that Province both to his own satisfaction and 
to that of the people. A Boston boy, he was to the 
manner born. He was, also, a graduate of Harvard 
College, nine years the senior of John Quincy. x\nd yet 
Governor Belcher was neither a fortunate nor a popular 
chief magistrate of Massachusetts. Though a victim of 

56 



JOHN QUINCY 



the gout, the sufiering caused by attacks of which may 
have made him irritable, his person and presence are 
said to have been graceful and pleasing, while his manner 
was hearty and his address affable. But, known to be 
a friend and advocate of high prerogative principles in 
government, he was given to intrigue and suspected of 
tortuous political methods. Not in sympathy with the 
mass of the community he was set to rule over, he was, 
when opposed, inclined to arbitraiy measures. He was 
unfortunate also in the period of his administration; for 
it fell in the midst of what a grave historian has not hesi- 
tated to term a "bog" of insolvency, — a miry waste in 
which Massachusetts floundered about for over half a 
century, continually seeking to devise some scheme by 
w^hich something other than specie could be made avail- 
able as currency and in discharge of debts. The finan- 
cial situation had thus become well-nigh intolerable in 
Belcher's time. Trade had turned into gambling, and 
neither buyer nor seller could "calculate intelligently 
what would be the worth to-morrow of the printed rags 
which passed between them to-day." The private bank 
project was sure to aggravate yet further the evils of the 
situation, and in his opposition to it Belcher was w^holly 
right; but, unfortunately, the methods of opposition he 
had recourse to "served only to exasperate the people, 
and beget a malignant spirit." The usual result fol- 
lowed. In the popular mind, advocacy of the Land 
Bank became identified with opposition to royal preroga- 
tive and an arbitrary administration, the action of which 
was dictated from Whitehall. Everywhere the stub- 

67 



JOHN QUINCY 



born colonial spirit of resistance and retaliation was 
aroused. Boston sent rebellious Land-bankers to the 
next legislature. Braintree was both as unintimidated 
and as unreasoning as Boston, and defiantly voted (though 
not without debate, for John Quincy was moderator), 
that in the matter of town rates the constables were to 
pay and the treasurer to receive Land Bank bills. This 
bordered closely on deliberate insurrection; and, had 
the same action been taken by many other towns, a 
wholly premature revolutionary movement might not 
impossibly then have assumed shape. The Braintree 
voters, moreover, capped their contumacy and misplaced 
patriotism by electing for representative a Land Bank 
subscriber. Captain William Hunt. Thus Colonel 
Quincy, greatly to his credit, was, on an altogether false 
issue, thrown out of the legislative position which he had 
so long and honorably filled. 

In May of 1741, while the excitement was still at its 
height, the legislature again assembled. Promptly it 
elected as speaker Samuel Watts, a Land Bank director. 
As promptly the choice was vetoed by Governor Belcher. 
Then the House chose William Fairfield, who, though 
no oflScial of the Land Bank, was a strong advocate of 
it, — a Land Bank partisan. He was endured till the 
next day only, when the governor dissolved the House 
because it disclosed "so much of an inclination to sup- 
port the fraudulent and pernicious" scheme. At the 
same brief session Samuel Adams, the ejected, was chosen 
to His Majesty's Council, together with fourteen other 
aggressive Land-bankers. The governor with scant 

58 



JOHN QUINCY 



courtesy, flung them all out. They and their sympa- 
thizers reinforced their persistence with sucli phrases as 
that used by Henry Lee, — "the privilege of an English- 
man is my sufficient warrant"; while Belcher, irritated 
that a colony which "enjoyed more privileges than most 
of his Majesty's Dominions (hap})y New England thus 
distinguished)," should prove so wilful, grew more arbi- 
trary. His course greatly stimulated the jealousy and 
suspicion alw^ays felt in Massachusetts of government 
through the "Lords of Trade and Plantation," who now 
more than ever were intervening. The great majority 
of the people were in open array against him; and events 
were hastening to a crisis. Not only were subscribers 
to the Land Bank threatened with ruin, not only were 
officials closely sympathetic with the provincial feeling 
deprived of their commissions, but the multitude, sin- 
cere in their patriotic impulse, had a feeling that their 
most sacred rights were being trampled on. Mutterings 
of armed resistance were heard. The country' farmers 
and the Boston artisans secretly combined. Word was 
quietly passed around that on the 19th of this very 
month of May some twenty thousand men would march 
on Boston, where two thousand more would be ready to 
unite wdth them. They would break the barrier erected 
against the circulation of the Land Bank notes. They 
would compel the merchants to take them for corn. Of 
this ferment one of the centres seems to have been Brain- 
tree. Notices of the rising were posted on its meeting- 
house, or placed on the walls of its taverns. Other towns 
near by — Stoughton, Weymouth, Hingham — saw like no- 

59 



JOHN QUINCY 



tices: — ''Here are a number of men that want the com- 
pany, of our design there is no fear of failing, our names 
must be kept secret." Captain Pierce, of Milton, was to 
lead them. Such were some of the statements made by 
willing or unwilling witnesses. 

These rumors were obvious exaggerations. Still they 
were the flying spindrift attesting the tumultuous char- 
acter of the storm which tore the waters of both political 
and social life. Enough is revealed to show why John 
Adams could afterwards say that a greater ferment was 
raised than when, years later, the Stamp Act was im- 
posed. Whatever the nature or extent of the threatened 
insurrection, it was not kept so secret but that rumors of 
it reached the ear of Governor Belcher. Nothing what- 
ever, either documentary or in the way of tradition, has 
come down to this generation throwing light on the per- 
sonal or social relations which existed between Governor 
Belcher and Colonel Quincy. Boston was then a com- 
paratively small and compact town, with less than twenty 
thousand inhabitants; and, both Boston boys, they were 
some eight years only apart both at school and college, 
Belcher being the elder. Subsequent to college days 
Colonel Quincy was speaker of the House of Representa- 
tives during all but the closing year of Belcher's long 
administration. The two men must therefore have 
known each other well, and their official relations at least 
had necessarily been close. On the Land Bank issue they 
were also clearly in full accord. Naturally, therefore, 
when disturbing rumors of popular ferment in the towns 
about Braintree were brought to the governor's notice, 

60 



JOHN QUINCY 



he at once turned to Colonel Quiney for assistance. 
Here are his instructions sent post haste, doubtless, to 
Braintree: "His Excellency desires you would forth- 
with make strict inquiry into the matter mentioned in 
the enclosed paper, and if you find anything in the stor}\ 
that you consult with Mr. Justice Lincoln [of Hingham], 
upon it, And that he join with you in suppressing this 
riotous and disorderly Proceeding; and that you report 
the state of the Business as soon as may be. It will 
be best to act with as much privacy and caution as the 
affair w^ill permit, lest by making the matter too public 
the people should be put in Mind of that which they had 
but little thought of before." 

The mission intrusted to Colonel Quiney seems to 
have been carried out successfully. At least, no disturb- 
ance occurred. Perhaps the proclamation issued a little 
later, conveying the highly gratifying intelligence that 
the unpopular Belcher had been removed and William 
Shirley appointed as his successor, was most productive 
of quiet. The change was fortunate, and was made at 
just the right moment; for, by this time, the British Board 
of Trade, which had been appealed to, had discovered 
that an old Act of Parliament, called the "Bubble Act," 
passed in 1719, at the time of the collapse of the South 
Sea Company craze, could be made to do duty as an 
effective weapon against the proposed Massachusetts 
Land Bank; and thus, to quote the language of Palfrey, 
"The Land Bank Company was caught in its own de- 
vices. For besides that, by force of this law, the com- 
pany must desist from all further issue of its bills, each 

61 



JOHN QUINCY 



individual member of it was made liable, not only for 
the negotiable value of them, but for the sum at which, 
according to the stipulation on their face, they were 
redeemable in silver, with the further addition of inter- 
est from the time of their being put into circulation." 

Whether just or otherwise, this action was certainly 
drastic. It brought the Land Bank scheme to a sum- 
mary close. The directors not only "disincorporated 
themselves," but they proceeded to call in their bills 
outstanding, and "consumed them to ashes" so effectually 
that, as Belcher's successor shortly after wrote, "not one 
honest man will suffer much by it." But this course of 
treatment, however salutary as well as effective, emanat- 
ing as it did from a foreign source always in Massachu- 
setts regarded with suspicion and jealousy, was far from 
acceptable to the community to which it was applied. 
It might be paternal: it was certainly arbitrary. The 
Massachusetts Bay community had never taken kindly 
to paternalism; and they now fiercely resented this appli- 
cation of the rod. It aroused in the hearts of the pro- 
vincials not only a feeling of intense resentment, but 
emotions of desperation even. The representatives as- 
serted in their General Court Journal that, if they "did 
not struggle in every way to maintain their liberty, they 
would act more like the vassals of an arbitrary prince 
than like subjects of King George their most gracious 
Sovereign"; and, as John Adams subsequently put it 
in one of his controversial papers, "This radical change 
in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of 
the people was the real American Revolution." Those 

6S 



JOHN QUINCY 



conteniporarv chroniclers may not be far wrong who 
asserted that, if Belcher had continued much lonp^er in 
office, a collision with Great Britain, more or less for- 
midable in character, might have occurred in 1741. The 
theme chosen for his part in the Harvard Commence- 
ment of 1740 by the younger Sam Adams is suggestive 
on this })oint. It was set forth in these words: "Whether 
it be lawful to resist the superior magistrates, if the Com- 
monwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?" Delivered 
at that precise moment, it was no abstract question, no 
academic anticipation of a strife looming on a distant 
horizon. It w^as a present, a vital question, urged by 
the thoughts and emotions fostered in the speaker's own 
home, inspired by the indignation felt for the contumely 
to which his father had been subjected in that very 
spring. 

The exhuming of the South Sea "Bubble Act," and 
its parliamentary application to the Province, was one 
of the closing episodes of Governor Belcher's adminis- 
tration. For it he was, probably with justice, held 
responsible, and it intensified the odium w'ith which he 
had already come to be regarded. None the less it 
smoothed the path of his successor, for the Land Bank 
scheme was removed from it. By great good fortune, 
also, Governor Shirley, though not, like Belcher, Mas- 
sachusetts born, was as courteous and tactful as his 
predecessor had been irritable and arbitrary; and, al- 
though he had to carr}^ out the provisions of an o])prossive, 
even if salutary, Act of Parliament, he did it in such 
fashion as to work the least injury. He calmed the 

03 



JOHN QUINCY 



storm, adroitly directing the attention of the people to 
the Spanish War, its aspect of danger to the colonies, 
and the need of enlistments. With its eyes set on the 
costly, if successful, Louisburg expedition, the Province, 
in very helpless fashion, drifted into complete public 
insolvency. The popular delusion that money can be 
made out of paper by virtue of an act of legislation 
worked its disastrous consequences. Almost every pos- 
sible ingenious expedient for making payments with new 
promises to pay had been, or now, was tried; and its 
inefficacy proved. At last, as an outcome wholly unfore- 
seen, of the brilliant success which crowned Governor 
Shirley's early military ventures, the financial capacity 
of Thomas Hutchinson devised, in spite of popular oppo- 
sition, a way "of extrication from a state of things in 
which Massachusetts, with ample resources in the capac- 
ities of her position and the energy of her people was 
[for over half a century] kept in a miserable state of 
indigence and discomfort." 

This, however, is anticipating the course of events, in 
which the Land Bank scheme of 1740 was but a single 
episode. Colonel John Quincy was not concerned with 
those later developments through which the Province of 
Massachusetts Bay, burdened with merely the ordi- 
naiy oppressions of the old-world, eighteenth-century, 
foreign misgovernment, drifted on toward the hour when 
extraordinary impositions in the form of "writs of assist- 
ance" and "Stamp Act" stirred the people to overt deeds 
of rebellion. 

We are now, however, in a position to see that Colonel 

64 



JOHN QUINCY 



Qiiincy, amid the confusions and perplexities of his time, 
pursued the one course open for the immediate relief 
and the ultimate liberation of his country. Obviously, 
he was side-tracked in his political career because of his 
opposition to a popular movement in itself inherently 
unsound, though for a time identified in the popular 
mind with patriotic aspirations. His affiliation with a 
royal governor, as eager to oppose the self-governing 
instincts of the people as he was ready to crush a fiat- 
money craze, was a mere unavoidable incident; and the 
supposition that, because of such affiliation, lie wjis 
justly rejected by the Braintree constituency is contrary 
to every consideration of historic perspective. The situ- 
ation was plainly confused; nor did the issues of the 
period present themselves in simple form. Everything, 
however, goes to show that John Quincy was one with 
the community of which he was a part in all their higher 
aspirations, that he set his face like a flint against any 
encroachments upon the rights and privileges of the 
Province; but how could he, a sagacious, level-headed 
man, raise the standard of revolt against England with 
"Liberty and a Land Bank" for a battle-cry.? To 
choose deliberately between the alternatives thrust upon 
him was, to a far-seeing and sensitive man, little less 
than tragical. On the one hand, blending with the 
delusive visions of wealth, were the groping aspirations 
of the provincial home-rulers. On the other hand was 
partnership with the recognized exponent of prerogative 
and alien rule in the destruction of the scheme created by 
those delusions. It was not given to him, as it was to 

65 



JOHN QUINCY 



Charles Sumner in his fight for the freedom of the slave, 
to feel and declare — "There is no other side!" There 
was another side; and the fact that John Quincy did not 
halt between two opinions bears witness to his strength 
of character. Disregarding consequences, as far as he 
personally was concerned, he openly and sturdily devoted 
his energies to what he conceived to be the duty nearest 
at hand; and so in that crisis of 1741 John Quincy proved 
true to himself, true to his convictions that the Land 
Bank scheme was fraught with measureless disaster to its 
infatuated supporters. Accordingly, until the scheme 
was crushed, he stood by the constituted authorities, 
accepting the odium inseparable from that line of action. 
The day of freedom's fight, clear of the Land Bank and 
the fiat money of 1741, — though, unfortunately, not of a 
fiat money of its own invention, — was yet to come. 
Against that day he maintained the ancient league with 
righteousness, doing the work proper to the hour. May 
we not apply to him those words which Morley uses to 
characterize Gladstone — "A glorious nature that doth 
put life into business, with a solid and sober nature that 
hath as much of the ballast as of the sail" ? 

While Colonel Quincy was bearing in dignified silence 
the disfavor of his fellow-citizens, that veiy unsavory 
demagogue, Joseph Gooch, took advantage of the 
speaker's popular obscuration to displace him as colonel 
of the Suffolk regiment. The account of what then 
occurred is interesting enough to be presented in all the 
fulness with which President John Adams has pre- 
served it. With free strokes of the pen he presents a 

66 



JOHN QUINCY 



rough outline of that familiar personality — a stage dema- 
gogue in a Puritan community. With the Land-bankers 
in power and the voters demoralized, it was compara- 
tively easy for this wealthy Boston lawyer to invade 
Braintree, rout its respectabilities, and parade as the 
popular figure of the day. "He had been a man of 
pleasure," wrote President Adams, "and bore the in- 
delible marks of it on his face to the grave. . . . Not suc- 
ceeding at the bar in Boston, he had recourse to religion 
to assist him, joined the Old South Church, to avail him- 
self of the influence of the sisterhood, and set up for 
representative for the town of Boston, but failed, and 
disappointed of his hopes in law and politics, he re- 
nounced the city, came up to Quincy [then part of Brain- 
tree], hired a house, turned churchman and set himself 
to intriguing for promotion both in the military' and civil 
departments. He interceded with the favorites of Gov- 
ernor Shirley, in this place, to procure him the commis- 
sion of colonel in the regiment of militia, and an election 
for representative of the town in the General Court. He 
promised to build a steeple to their church, at his own 
expense. 

"It was at this time the corru})t })ractice of treating, 
as they called it, at training and at elections was intro- 
duced, which so long prevailed in the town of Braintree.'* 
The most liberal advantage was taken of this custom by 
Gooch. Like water from the town pump, beer and cider 
flowed on the training-field; while, in the taverns, they 
were constantly on tap. A display of such exuberant 
good-fellowship melted the hearts of the naturally re- 

67 



JOHN QUINCY 



served New England farmer, nor could Governor Shirley, 
then a resident of Braintree, resist the voice of the multi- 
tude, and even the importunity of his own church. He 
reluctantly dismissed Colonel Quincy, saying years after- 
wards that nothing he had ever done in his administration 
had given him so much pain; and Gooch was made colonel 
in his stead. "Application was made to all the captains, 
lieutenants and ensigns, in that part of the regiment which 
lies within the three parishes of the ancient town of 
Braintree, to see if they would accept commissions under 
Colonel Gooch, and agree to vote for him as representa- 
tive for the town. The then present oflficers were men 
among the most respectable of the inhabitants, in point 
of property, understanding and character. They rejected 
the proposition with scorn. My father was among them,'* 
continues President Adams, "he was offered a captain's 
commission. He spurned the offer with disdain; would 
serve in the militia under no colonel but Quincy." But 
with the new officers — "these were of a very different 
character" — Gooch prevailed. He was elected repre- 
sentative over even the Land-banker, Captain Hunt, not 
improbably himself one of the more respectable oflScers 
who would not serve under Gooch. The demoralization 
was, however, only temporary, for President Adams goes 
on, "all the substantial people of the town aroused them- 
selves," and turned Gooch out, "which so enraged him 
that he swore he would no longer live in Braintree; re- 
nounced the church, refused to build their steeple, built 
him a house on Milton Hill, and there passed the re- 
mainder of his days." 



JOHN QUINCY 



From this welter of confusions Colonel Quincy emerged, 
invitino^ confidence by his sane and safj^acioiis judfi^ment. 
Even in the hour of their infatuation his own towns- 
people did not cease to call upon him to serve on the 
more exacting committees. After the old fashion he was 
chosen moderator of the March meeting of 1743, and 
they also paid him the compliment (the highest they then 
could) of electing him selectman with his loyal comrade, 
Lieutenant John Adams; and thus early was it exempli- 
fied that the statesmen of this community regard no 
office too humble for them in which to serve their neigh- 
bors and fellow-citizens, and John Quincy, in the sim- 
plicity of his devotion to the public good, only showed 
the true attitude of a citizen in a free democracy. His 
large experience and abilities were not, however, destined 
to remain long unemployed in their fulness for the benefit 
of the entire Province. Once more, in 1744, he was re- 
turned to the House of Representatives; and, in all, he 
was elected four additional years to that body. He did 
not become again " the Honorable Speaker," but a marked 
distinction was paid him by his elevation to the higher 
chamber, as it w^as accounted, the Governor's Council. 
Here, with the urbane and conciliatory Shirley, he wrought 
for eight successive years, — a period which included some 
of the most trying experiences of the French War, with its 
Indian accompaniments. When at last he retired from 
office, the people, though sorely oppressed in trade, were, 
in a political sense, "as buoyant as ever." 

Of Cavour it has been said that he had all the prudence 
and all the imprudence of the true statesman. John 

69 



JOHN QUINCY 



Quincy was prudent, — always prudent; but, on that high 
level which gave moral stability to his career, he secured 
the confidence of two generations of contemporaries. 
Chosen by the colonists to the most responsible offices to 
which a native-born New England man might aspire, 
higher position for him there was not. An American, he 
asked for no more honorable place than to be in the 
van of those who were contending for the rights of Amer- 
icans. Said King George III. to John Adams in their 
first interview after independence was secured, "I un- 
derstand you are much attached to your country?" "I 
have no attachment but to my country," quickly re- 
sponded Adams. "An honest man," rejoined the king, 
*'will never have any other." 

When he finally retired to his farm on the shores of 
Boston Bay, Colonel Quincy was some sixty-five years 
old. Here, in the mansion built about the time of his 
marriage, he passed in apparent contentment the closing 
years of a busy and useful life, — a sequence not always 
assured. But, before coming to the last scene of all, 
something should be said of his untiring labors for the 
town. I had the curiosity to read through the Braintree 
records to learn how large those labors were. I found 
that he had been chosen moderator forty- two times, at 
least, — a record which, it is safe to say, has not been sur- 
passed. To enumerate the committees on which Colonel 
Quincy served would be tedious. An exception should 
be made, however, in case of the one created in 1729, to 
determine "whether it may be an advantage to the town 
to be divided into two towns." The North Precinct took 

70 



JOHN QUINCY 



the lead in this matter, and John Qnincy was made chair- 
man of the committee, which agreed on a favorable 
report; but the two other precincts would not let the 
North Precinct go. In 1756 the North Precinct again 
brought forward a "scheme" to divide the town; and 
again it w^as defeated. If, as is not unlikely, John Quincy 
was also the moving spirit in this second attempt at a 
severance, it would make him, in a more intimate sense, 
the father of the town created nearly forty years later. 

An examination of the church records shows that 
Colonel Quincy was as deeply interested in spiritual as in 
secular affairs. Their every page makes manifest his 
hearty co-operation with the pastors whose ministry co- 
incided with the more active period of his life, — the Rev. 
John Hancock and the Rev. Lemuel Briant. Frequently 
elected moderator, this otherwise busy man assumed also 
the perplexing duties of the parish committees. When 
the Rev. Mr. Briant, an advanced liberal, is charged with 
heresy by a council of sister churches, it is John Quincy 
who acts as chairman of the committee chosen to con- 
sider the charges; and the report returned by the commit- 
tee, which we may assume to have been drawn up by the 
chairman, is for that day a remarkable production. It 
was decisive in its defence of the pastor's "right of pri- 
vate judgment," and its commendation of him "for the 
pains he takes to promote a free and impartial examina- 
tion into all articles of our holy religion, so that all may 
judge, even of themselves, what is right." Such lan- 
guage then used was indicative of a vigorous and inde- 
pendent mind of high order. A masterful hand is re- 

71 



JOHN QUINCY 



vealed. When a new meeting-house is to be built, he, as 
a matter of course, is put on the committee. As early 
in his church relations as 1723, Major Quincy *'was 
fairly and clearly chosen by written votes to the oflBce of 
tuning the Psalm in our assemblies of public worship;" 
and, dying, he bequeathed a silver tankard for the com- 
munion service which bears this inscription — "The gift 
of the Hon'ble John Quincy, Esq., to the First Church 
in Braintree, 1767.'* 

A brief sketch printed in the columns of the Massachu- 
setts Gazette of July 23, 1767, closes with these words: 
**In private life he was exemplary; — headorn'dthe chris- 
tian profession by an holy life, a strict observance of the 
Lord's day, and a constant attendance upon the public 
ordinances of religion, — in one word, he was a gentle- 
man true to his trust, diligent and active in public busi- 
ness, punctual in promises and appointments, just towards 
all men, and devout towards God." 

Before John Quincy passed peacefully away in his own 
home, one glimpse of him there is afforded through the 
diary of John Adams, w^ho, then a man of thirty, had 
some fourteen months before become the husband of 
a grand-daughter of the Master of Mt. Wollaston. The 
entry is of the 25th of December, 1765. It is as fol- 
lows: "Went not to Christmas; dined at home; drank 
tea at grandfather Quincy's. The old gentleman in- 
quisitive about the hearing before the Governor and 
Council; about the Governor's and Secretary's looks 
and behaviour, and about the final determination of the 
Board. The old lady as merry and chatty as ever, with 




TABLET TO PRESIDENT JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 



JOHN QFIXCY 



her stories out of the newspa})ers." The hearing was on 
the memorial of tlie town of Boston that the courts of 
law, arbitrarily closed in retaliation for the Stamj) Act 
riots, should be opened. John Adams appeared with 
Gridley and Otis as counsel for the town in support of 
the memorial. 

Dying on the 13tli of July, 1767, in the seventy-eighth 
year of his age, John Quincy left four children: his only 
son Norton, who, passing his days in the home of his 
father, died without issue; Elizabeth, who married the 
Rev. William Smith, of Weymouth; Anna, who married 
John Thaxter, of Hingham; and Lucy, who married 
Cotton Tufts, of Weymouth. To Elizabeth and her hus- 
band, the pastor of the Weymouth church, was born 
Abigail, who married John Adams. This is the bond of 
kinship which unites the Adamses and the Quincys. It 
was emphasized by the transmission of a name ; for, as old 
John Quincy lay dying at Mt. Wollaston, this grand- 
daughter of his gave birth to a son; and when the next 
day, July V2, as was then the practice, the child was 
baptized, its grandmother, who was present at its birth, 
requested that it might be called after her father. Long 
afterwards the child thus named wrote of this incident: 
"It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was 
the name of one [massing from earth to immortality. 
These have been among the strongest links of my attach- 
ment to the name of Quincy, and have been to me 
through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing un- 
worthy of it." 

However the links were forged, we all feel that attach- 

73 



JOHN QUINCY 



ment to the name of Quincy. May it grow till it shall 
be to each of us a perpetual admonition to do nothing 
unworthy of Quincy! May the lives of all who have 
lived within its limits, and the labors of all who have 
devoted themselves to its peace and prosperity, inspire 
us with kindred virtues! And may he whose name it 
bears marshal us also the way to victories of freedom, 
friendship, faith! It was, it is said, a custom of the 
Locrian Greeks to leave a vacant place in their charging 
ranks for the spirit of Ajax, their elect hero. As the 
people of this community move onward in generations 
through the years to come, may they invoke as the genius 
of the vanward line no presence less worthy than the 
shade of John Quincy! 

ADDRESS BY BROOKS ADAMS. 

It would be absurd for me to introduce to you my own 
brother, who, to say the least, is as well known to you 
as I am myself, were it not that I can say of him some- 
thing he cannot say of himself. 

If it be true that the best lesson a man can learn is to 
honor his father and his mother, because thereby he learns 
to respect himself, it should follow that the best lesson any 
community can learn is to honor their ancestors, since by 
so doing they are taught to be ashamed to disgrace them. 

In this light my brother has been a public benefactor, 
for among his generation no man has done more to unroll 
before those who shall succeed us the noble record of the 
past than Charles Francis Adams. 

74 



JOHN QIJINCY 



ADDRESS BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 

Sixteen years ago it devolved on me to address a Quincy 
audience on an occasion not dissimilar to that of to-day. 
Standing where I now stand, I then spoke of an event 
which had occurred one hundred years before, — the in- 
corporation of what was previously the North Precinct 
of Braintree as an independent municipality, to be called 
Quincy. We were celebrating a first Centennial. Then 
the burden of the day devolved on me. It is different 
now. We are here to commemorate him after whom the 
town was named, one who had been five-and-twenty 
years in his grave when Quincy was incorporated, and 
my part is strictly subordinate. After the elaborate and 
exhaustive address delivered by Mr. Wilson, not much 
at best remains to be said of John Quincy. The prepa- 
ration of that address has been with Mr. Wilson a labor 
of love, and the information he has slowly and painfully 
gathered together is forcibly suggestive of the vast mass 
of historical material in the dusty archives of the Com- 
monwealth, in which he has so long and so toilsomely 
delved. What I have to contribute to the occasion will, 
therefore, occupy hardly more than a brief ten minutes, 
and I shall surely close before the hands of yonder clock 
mark the quarter-hour. 

Of Colonel John Quincy, of Mt. Wollaston, it can 
truly be said he is strictly typical of his time, — a time, as 
Mr. Wilson has told us, now lost in oblivion. He be- 

76 



JOHN QIJINCY 



longed to what is known in Massachusetts history as the 
Provincial Period; for the existence of Massachusetts as 
a community distinctly and naturally divides itself into 
three periods of development, — the Colonial, the Pro- 
vincial, and the Period of the Commonwealth. The 
first of the three, and, perhaps, historically the most in- 
teresting, began in 1620, with the settlement of Plymouth, 
and with that of Boston ten years later; and it closed 
with the abrogation in 1684 of the original charter of 
King James I., consummated through the action of the 
English courts of law. Then followed a brief interlude, 
almost of chaos, in which the most prominent figure is 
that Governor Edmund Andros whom the colonists, one 
day after the English Revolution of 1688 became known, 
rising en masse, put, as the expression went, "in a strong 
place"; in other words, they shut him up, a deposed 
prisoner of state, in what was afterwards known as 
Castle William. The interregnum, so to speak, dating 
from the abrogation of King James's charter, lasted 
seven years, to 1691, when the charter of William and 
Mary was matured ; and, under it, what was subsequently 
known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay came into 
existence. In May of the following year the first royal 
governor, William Phipps, landed in Boston; and, from 
1692, the succession of royal governors continued until 
the last of them. Governor Sir William Howe, left Boston 
with the evacuating British forces in March, 1776. An- 
other brief interregnum then ensued, until the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts came into being upon the 
formal adoption of the Constitution of 1780. 

76 



JOHN QUINCY 



Now it so chances that Colonel John Quincy was 
born in July, 1689. He was thus a little more than two 
years old when the Charter of WiUiam and Mary passed 
the seals, and not yet three when the first royal gov- 
ernor landed. He died in July, 1767, and the famous 
Tea Impost Bill — though at the time of his death the 
fact was unknown in New England — had been enacted 
by the British Parliament one short month only before, 
— in the preceding June. Thus the life of John Quincy 
was exactly coterminous with the Massachusetts Pro- 
vincial Period, for, born three months after the deposi- 
tion of Andros, he died in the month ensuing the passage 
of that Act of Parliament which proved the beginning 
of the end. I have also said that Colonel John Quincy 
was typical of his time, — of a period lost in obscurity; 
for, historically, it is undeniable that its Provincial 
Period is for Massachusetts the least interesting of its 
history. It naturally is, therefore, that one of the three 
periods which has passed into the deepest popular ob- 
hvion. With the Colonial Period, or that of the set- 
tlement, we are all more or less familiar. Its traditions 
abide. Names connected with it are still household 
words. It goes without saying, also, that we are equally 
familiar, indeed even more familiar, with the Revo- 
lutionary Period and what thereafter followed down 
to our own time. But the eighty years which intervened 
between the ending of the Colony and the beginning of 
the Commonwealth have practically passed out of mem- 
ory; and so Colonel John Quincy merely shared the fate 
of the epoch in which he lived and played his part. 

77 



JOHN QUINCY 



For instance, if I were now to ask those here to name 
any character prominent in public life during Provincial 
times, I gravely doubt whether a single name would be 
suggested. If one was suggested, it would probably be 
that of Thomas Hutchinson, practically the last royal 
governor. As respects literature, it would be the same. 
I have myself been somewhat of a student of the writings 
which have come down to us from the period of the 
Province, but I found them utterly devoid of imagination, 
of research, or of scientific value. Essentially theological, 
the Provincial Period left behind it little more than a 
dreary accumulation of pulpit discourses. The two books 
it produced of which I have ever had occasion to make 
considerable use were the "Magnalia" of Cotton Mather 
and the "Sermons" of Jonathan Edwards, — works which, 
it may safely be said, are distinctly, in the phrase of 
Hamlet, "caviare to the general." It was the same with 
events. They had no real significance. The Indian 
wars had constituted a great and interesting feature of 
the earlier time; but they ended, in 1676, with the death 
of King Philip at Mt. Hope. Thereafter we hear of what 
is known as Queen Anne's War, the Old French War, 
King George's War and the taking of Louisburg, while 
the pathetic exile of the Arcadian settlers is made familiar 
by the verses of Longfellow. The story of Wolfe and the 
capture of Quebec, the great epoch-making incident of the 
last French war, alone stand vividly out. The political 
issues of the period, at best trivial and monotonous, are 
now, to a large extent, well-nigh incomprehensible. The 
community, very limited in numbers, was wretchedly poor; 

78 



JOHN QIIINCY 



and its poverty was aggravated by everlasting controver- 
sies over the issue of paper money — provincial bills of 
the old tenor and the new tenor — and projects of land 
banks such as Mr. Wilson has described; as, also, the 
tedious, ever-recurring question relating to the salary of 
the royally appointed governor, whether it should be 
settled on him during his tenure of the office, or by virtue 
of an annual legislative vote. So, if I were now asked in 
what narrative the history of the period in which Colonel 
John Quincy was so prominent a public character could 
best be studied, I should be compelled to reply — in that 
child's book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, entitled 
"Grandfather's Chair." For general perusal the standard 
histories are simply unreadable. 

But let me illustrate: — Mr. Wilson, in the course of his 
address, made repeated references to Governor Burnet, 
whose death, he tells us, Hutchinson ascribes largely to 
irritation and worry incident to his unending controver- 
sies with the provincial legislative body. Mr. Wilson has 
also spoken at length and very interestingly of Governor 
Belcher, and his connection with the Land Bank of 1740. 
Here is what Nathaniel Hawthorne says of these two 
great characters of their day, in that most striking sketch 
of his entitled "Howe's Masquerade," one of his four 
charming legends of the Province House. The scene is 
laid early in the year 1776, and the author is describing 
the weird procession of governors, as the figures com- 
posing it emerged from the upper landing of the Province 
House, and, descending the broad flight of stairs, passed, 
in the presence of General Sir William Howe and his 

79 



JOHN QUINCY 



guests, through the ante-chamber of the official residence 
of the representatives of royalty. After picturing Gov- 
ernor Shute as an officer "in a scarlet and embroidered 
uniform, cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn 
by the Duke of Marlborough," Hawthorne then goes on: 
"Next came a portly gentleman, wearing a coat of shaggy 
cloth, lined with silken velvet. He had sense, shrewd- 
ness and humor in his face, and a folio volume under his 
arm; but his aspect was that of a man vexed and tor- 
mented beyond all patience, and harassed almost to 
death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a 
dignified person, dressed in a purple velvet suit, with very 
rich embroidery. His demeanor would have possessed 
much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the gout 
compelled him to hobble from stair to stair, with con- 
tortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this 
figure on the staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but 
continued to watch him steadfastly, until the gouty 
gentleman had reached the threshold, made a gesture of 
anguish and despair, and vanished into the outer gloom, 
whither the funeral music summoned him. 

"'Governor Belcher! — my old patron! — in his very 
shape and dress!' gasped Dr. Byles. 'This is an awful 
mockery!'" 

Here are two of the leading public characters of the 
period portrayed to the life, and yet I gravely doubt 
whether one of you who now listen to this extract has 
any distinct impression of either of them, or of Governor 
Shute who preceded them, or of Governor Shirley who 
followed them. None the less, these were the four royal 

80 



joiTx Qrrxrv 

governors of Massachusetts Bay during the long period 
of John Quincy's public life. If they are quite forgotten, 
why should John Quincy be even partially remembered? 

No! Chance largely rules the game; and, whether in 
arms, in statesmanship, in literature, in art or science, 
no man can make his mark unless opportunity offers. 
In the case of John Quincy opportunity never offered. 
The stage on which he played his part was small, its 
atmosphere frigitl. Again, as Mr. Wilson has suggested, 
had he lived before, and under different auspices, there 
is reason to assume he might have been the compatriot 
and coadjutor of Hampden, and as conspicuous as was 
Speaker Lenthal before, or John Hancock later. Had 
his lot been cast in the years which followed, he might 
not impossibly have been a fellow-actor with Washing- 
ton. He showed many of the characteristics of each and 
all of those named. Simply, for him the opportunity 
never presented itself. He was of his age! 

But it must always be borne in mind that John Quincy 
died in July, 1767, on the eve of that revolutionary 
convulsion known as our War of Independence. The 
importance and dramatic character of that convulsion, 
the overshadowing fame of those who rose into prom- 
inence in it, were, as Mr. Wilson has truly observed, 
even as a deluge, in that they first submerged, and then 
obliterated from the sands of time, the footprints of 
those who had gone before, and who had, none the less, 
prepared and made wide the way for the succeeding 
generation. 

Thus born amid the throes of what is known as the 

81 



JOHN QUINCY 



"Glorious Revolution of 1688," — that upheaval which 
ended the Stuart dynasty, and incidentally led to the 
downfall of Andros, — John Quincy seems to us in a way 
very remote. He belongs to the period of Queen Anne, 
of Marlborough and of the fourteenth Louis. He was 
contemporary with Peter the Great. And yet, seen in 
another way, he to me seems very near. For, as 
he lay dying at Mt. Wollaston, a great-grandson, the 
child of a daughter's daughter, was born to him, 
and was given his name. I, a descendant of his, 
was already in my thirteenth year when that great- 
grandson of John Quincy died. Thus one overlapping 
life carries him now addressing you back to Governor 
Andros and the time of the Stuarts, — back to the Revo- 
lution of 1688 and the Colonial Period of Massachusetts, 
back to a time anterior to Peter the Great. It seems as 
though I had but to reach out my hand, and it touches 
them. Seen thus, the twentieth century becomes closely 
linked with the seventeenth. 

And now, in closing, I have a confession to make. 
Some years ago it devolved on me to prepare an inscrip- 
tion for that tablet to John Quincy which faces you 
yonder on the wall, east of this pulpit. A descendant of 
Colonel Quincy, I thought at the time I had prepared 
that inscription with care and accurately. Later, to my 
own great mortification, I learned that I had begun it in 
ignorance, and gone on to a misstatement of fact. It 
records that he was born in 1689, not giving the exact 
date of his birth, and goes on to add that his birthplace 
was Braintree. And yet it so chances that I myself had 

82 




MEMORIAL TABLET TO JOHN QLIXCY 



JOHN QUINCY 



previously discovered, as the result of my own researches, 
that John Quincy, born on the 21st of July, came into 
being, not in Braintree, but in Boston. Having made 
this confession, I propose to ])ass my error along, and 
put the responsibility for it where it belongs. I have 
said that I myself, in the course of investigations made 
years before, had discovered, and first published cor- 
rectly, both the date and place of John Quincy's birth. 
When, however, I came to pre])aring an inscription for 
the enduring marble, a reference to my own writings not 
being convenient, I had recourse to those of Dr. Pattee. 
I had generally found Dr. Pattee accurate; but in his 
History' of Old Braintree and Quincy, page 588, to my 
lasting confusion, I found the following, — "John Quincy 
was born in the North Precinct of Braintree in 1689," — 
and I accepted the statement! It must, of course, be 
changed, and the record made correct. Nevertheless, 
it also affords additional and curious illustration of the 
fact, so emphasized by Mr. Wilson, that John Quincy 
had in our generation become legendary, and a charac- 
ter hardly less fabulous than he who gave name to Rome, 
when I, a descendant, preparing the inscription to be 
graven on the tablet for which he for whom Quincy was 
named had waited a century and a third, was unable to 
specify the precise date of his birth, and gave the place 
thereof incorrectly. 

At the conclusion of this address the congregation, 
invited by the President, arose and sang "Old Hundred." 
The Benediction, pronounced by the Rev. Ellery Chan- 

8S 



JOHN QUINCY 



ning Butler, ended the exercises. The people lingered 
for a while to examine the two tablets, — that to John 
Quincy and the one to Charles Francis Adams; and to 
greet one another, and to welcome strangers. 



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